Rag and Bone Page 15

  “I’ll argue self-defense.”

  “You do that,” he said, “but last time I looked at the jury instructions on self-defense, if someone comes at you with fists you don’t get to blow their brains out with a semiautomatic.”

  “You can if his fists can kill you,” I said. “My expert on battered women’s syndrome will testify that her belief that she was in mortal danger was reasonable.”

  He grunted dismissively. “My expert will say she wasn’t. This is going to get filed as second-degree.”

  “That’s bullshit, Tony. We both know this is voluntary manslaughter, at best.”

  He grinned. “I gotta to give the trial deputy something to deal.”

  “Then file it as voluntary and let them deal it down to involuntary.”

  “Yeah, right,” he said. He snapped his suspenders thoughtfully. “But because I like you, I’m going to do you a big favor. I’m going to see this case gets assigned to the greenest deputy I can find. Give it to someone as their first homicide. If you can’t deal some greenhorn down to involuntary, you better turn in your bar card.”

  “You give to it a green trial deputy and they’ll be so afraid of screwing up and losing their job, they’ll treat it like a capital case.”

  “I have great faith in your powers of persuasion,” he said.

  Bemused, I said, “You haven’t changed, Tony. You talk like the street, but you think like a cop.”

  “It’s payback. I still remember you beat me in that case we tried together.”

  I couldn’t tell if it was a joke or not. “As I recall, my client was convicted.”

  “But you kept him off Death Row.” He was serious.

  I got up. “So, how’s exile?”

  The handsome face turned to stone. “There ain’t but one rule when you strike at the king, Rios. You got to kill him. Now get out of here, I have work to do.”

  When I looked back he was staring into the mid-distance with an expression of bored desperation.

  The day had turned muggy. By the time I pulled into my driveway, I was ready for a shower, something to eat and a nap. Then I remembered Angel would be waiting for me. I cut the engine and sat there rubbing my temples. How was I supposed to do my work with a ten-year-old boy to worry about? Welcome to the world of single parenthood, I thought, and then, Who can I call for advice?

  Angel was sitting on the deck reading Tales from Homer. As I stood at the doorway leading outside, I could hear him softly sounding out words. I tossed my coat aside, loosened my tie and stepped out to the deck.

  “Hey, Angel,” I said, sitting at the edge of his chaise.

  He set the book in his lap and looked at me anxiously. “Did you see my mom?”

  “Yes,” I said. “She’s going to be okay in a day or so. I’ll take you to see her tomorrow.” I tapped the book. “How far along are you?”

  Reluctantly, he allowed me to change the subject. He picked up the book and struggled to pronounce Scylla and Charybdis.

  “The rock and the whirlpool,” I said. “Isn’t there a picture of them?”

  He leafed through the pages, then handed the book to me. “This one?”

  I studied the wood print of the tiny ship entering a narrow strait, on one side of which were hulking rocks, and on the other a whirlpool in which the wreckage of another ship was still visible. The proverbial rock and a hard place. The place where he and Vicky had lived most of their lives.

  “Why can’t Ulysses go home?” Angel was asking.

  I returned the book to him. “Because he angered Poseidon.”

  “The god of the ocean.”

  “That’s right. Poseidon was offended by Ulysses so he put obstacles in his way to keep him from reaching Ithaca. But some of the gods were friends of Ulysses so they tried to help him overcome Poseidon’s obstacles. This is a very old story,” I said, “but one reason people still read it is because sometimes in life it feels like we’re struggling the way Ulysses had to struggle. We have to overcome dangers and obstacles, too, sometimes alone and sometimes with the help of others. You understand?”

  His dark eyes were thoughtful. “I’m not sure.”

  “Then think of it this way,” I said. “A month ago, you and I had never met, but since then, all these things have happened to you and here you are sitting here with me.”

  “And you’re going to help my mom and me,” he mused aloud, constructing the first fragile link between the book and his life.

  I wanted him to make that connection, to give him the beginning of a narrative that might help sustain him through the troubles that were coming.

  He looked at me. “What’s going to happen to my mom?”

  “Her situation is very complicated,” I replied. I loosened my tie and unbuttoned my shirt to feel the sun on my throat. “Listen, Angel, I’m going to talk to you the same way I would to another grown-up, so if there’s something you don’t understand, stop me and I’ll explain.”

  “Okay,” he said, half-anxious, half-proud to be addressed like an adult.

  “Your mother is going to be charged with the murder of your father. I tried to stop that from happening, but I couldn’t. Now we’re going to the next stage, where I’ll try to convince the lawyer on the other side, the district attorney, to lower the charge against your mother down from murder to something less serious. Do you understand?”

  “Plea bargain,” he said.

  “How do you know that?”

  “That’s what they did to my dad.”

  I remembered his father had been cut an exceptionally good deal the last time he was arrested. “That’s right. I’m going to try to get a plea bargain for your mother so that she’ll spend as little time in jail as possible. If the district attorney won’t agree, then we’ll go to the next step, to a trial. I think I have a decent chance of getting your mother off completely if I can convince the jury that she shot your father to defend herself because he had been hitting her—”

  “My dad never hit my mom,” he said.

  “What?”

  “My dad loves us.”

  I made the split second decision that it was better to burst this illusion now than to let it harden into even deeper denial.

  “Angel, I saw your mom at the jail. She’d been beaten up.”

  “She said he did it?”

  “Yes.”

  He shook his head. “No way.”

  “What happened when you left here with your mom?”

  He gazed past me at the canyon, thinking. “My dad came to get us.”

  “Did you know he was coming?”

  He nodded, looking guilty. “My mom told me it was a secret. I wanted to go to the baseball game with you and John, but she said we had to leave.”

  “Where did you go?”

  He fiddled nervously with the book as if he was letting me into secrets. “To Grandma Jesusita’s. We stayed there that night, but the next day we had to leave again.”

  “You had to leave? Do you know why?”

  He shook his head. “I heard my dad arguing with Grandma after I went to bed, but they were talking Spanish so I didn’t understand. After breakfast, we went to a motel.”

  “The one where I found you?”

  He shook his head. “No, a different one. Then we went to another one, then the one where—the last one.”

  “Do you know why you moved around so much?”

  “No.” He said it so quickly that I knew he was lying, but I thought if I didn’t press the point, he would eventually reveal it.

  “What did you do at these motels?”

  He ran his a hand through his hair and it stayed up like a porcupine’s quills. “Watched TV. My dad bought me a mitt and a ball and we played catch in the parking lot, but only after it was dark and I couldn’t see the ball too good. We went to McDonald’s. My mom said—” He stopped himself.

  “What did she say?”

  He flapped the pages of the book again. “My dad was shooting up.”

  �
��Using heroin?”

  “He was in the bathroom for a long time. He said he was on the toilet, but when he came out, I saw his eyes.” He looked at me. “I tried to find his works.”

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to throw them away, then he would stop. I hate it when he shoots up,” he said passionately. “He makes my mom cry and he promises to take me places, but he doesn’t. I’m never going to take drugs.”

  “What did your mother do when your father started taking drugs?”

  He shrugged. “She told him to stop.”

  “They fight? Tell me the truth.”

  He shook his head. “My dad would tell her to shut up but then he said he was sorry. Maybe they fought when I wasn’t there.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “For walks.”

  “You went for walks?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. I saw the stars in the sidewalk and that place with movie-star footprints. It was cool.”

  “Weren’t your parents worried about you?”

  “I can take care of myself. Uncle Henry?”

  “What, m’ijo?”

  “Can I have some lunch?”

  I glanced at my watch, it was almost three. “God, I haven’t fed you yet. I’m sorry, Angel. There’s a pretty good pizza place not far from here. You like pizza?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Come on, then,” I said. “Afterward, we can stop at the video store and get some videos for tonight.”

  “Phantom Menace?”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  He smiled, and when he smiled he looked like an ordinary boy, not one who went on hunt and destroy missions for his junkie father’s syringes. He should have been harder but only his surface innocence had been ruffled. He retained the deeper innocence that allowed him to believe he could free his father of addiction by tossing out his works and to turn flight from his desperate parents into an adventure on Hollywood Boulevard. There was no doubt, though, that he loved them—loved them enough to lie to me about his father beating his mother. I suppose that was the deepest innocence of all.

  After I had put Angel to bed, I called my sister.

  “You sound exhausted,” she said.

  “I’ve never taken care of a kid before,” I replied. “I guess I fret more than I need to.”

  “Well, at least I’ll be able to relieve you of the responsibility.”

  “That’s one of the things I need to talk to you about,” I said. “When I saw Vicky this morning, she told me to take Angel to his other grandmother.”

  “Jesusita? Did she say why?”

  “I think we both know why, Elena.”

  She was quiet a moment. “Does she even want you to represent her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s something, I guess,” she said bitterly.

  “You know, Vicky’s had a rough life, I would imagine the only homosexuals she’s ever met were—”

  “What, Henry? Not the sterling characters we are.” She was quiet again. “It took me a long time to completely come out. I told myself it was because I wanted to protect my privacy, but really it was because I was ashamed to be a lesbian. I want a relationship with my daughter. I’ll meet her more than halfway, but I can’t be a different person for her.”

  “I know. She yanks my chain, too.”

  “The ironic thing, of course,” Elena continued, “is that I wasn’t able to love and accept her until I came out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I had to learn about compassion and tolerance when I came out because you can’t ask from others what you’re not prepared to give. I ran away from Vicky once because she wasn’t the daughter I wanted. Now I understand that it isn’t up to her to be who I might want her to be. It’s up to me to love her for who she is.”

  “Even if she doesn’t reciprocate?”

  “Even that wouldn’t matter if she would just give me a chance.” She sighed. “Well, maybe I don’t deserve it. It’s asking a lot to be forgiven for abandoning your child.”

  “That’s in the past. Look at everything you’ve already done for her.”

  “Family isn’t a matter of credits and debits.”

  I didn’t want to have the family values debate again, so I let it drop. “Do you still want to be here for the arraignment?”

  “Of course,” she said. “When is it?”

  “Monday, early. Elena, I tried to intervene with the D.A., but they’re going charge her with second-degree murder.”

  “Is that as bad as it sounds?”

  I told her about my meeting with Tony Earl and explained why I still believed I might be able to deal it down to minimize any jail time she would have to serve. “We’ll have to post bail,” I concluded.

  “That won’t be a problem as long as I have a few days. Have you spoken to Jesusita Trujillo?”

  “No, I left a message for her. I’ll try her again when we finish.”

  “Maybe while I’m there, I could meet her.”

  “I’ll try to get her to the arraignment.”

  “How’s Angelito?”

  “Remarkably adaptable,” I said, and described the ordinary evening we had just had of videos and pizza. “Maybe this is what Edith meant when she called him an invulnerable.”

  We talked for a few minutes more and after I hung up with her, I called Jesusita Trujillo. Once again I got her machine, and I left an even more urgent message, asking her to call me at any time of the day or night. And then I staggered off to bed.

  I was awakened by screaming. Even before I was entirely conscious, I was running down the hall to the guest room, where I found Angel thrashing and crying. I sat on the bed and shook his shoulders gently while intoning his name. He opened terrified eyes and began to pummel me with his fists. “Hey, hey,” I said warding off the blows. “It’s me, Uncle Henry. Come on, m’ijo, it’s all right. Everything’s all right.” My voice finally penetrated his terror and he dropped his arms to his side, shivering and panting.

  “I dreamed of my dad,” he said.

  “You saw him the way he was in the motel?”

  He began to sob. His sobs were the existential wail of a baby that had no other language to communicate its horror and fear. He bundled himself against me. I put my arms around him and let him cry, thinking, Better now than twenty years from now in some therapists office.

  “That’s right, m’ijo, you go ahead and cry,” I whispered in his ear. “You’ve been a brave little boy but now I’m going to take care of you.”

  He sat back and looked at me. My T-shirt was soaked with tears and snot. “You promise, Uncle Henry?”

  “I promise. Do you want to talk about your nightmare?” I asked him, handing him the box of tissues from the nightstand.

  He blew his nose and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. He said, “No,” but I saw a question in his eyes.

  “Is there something else you want to tell me?”

  “Are you going to get my mom out of jail?”

  “I don’t know for sure,” I said. “There’s a good chance she’ll have to do some time.”

  “A long time?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe just a couple of years, maybe a lot longer.”

  “If my mom goes to jail,” he said, “can I stay with you?”

  This wasn’t the impulsive plea of a frightened child but something he had been thinking about. To someone else, he might have sounded cold-blooded, but I recognized it as bravery. He loved his parents, but his father was dead and his mother might be gone for a long time, so he was trying to make the best choice for himself. As I looked into his dark eyes, it also occurred to me that, just as his mother had been sizing me up, so had Angel and he had come to a different conclusion about my character. I loved him more at that moment, loved his fragility and trust, than I had ever loved another human being. If I was going to be equal to his trust, I knew I couldn’t buy him off with a platitude.

  “I’ll do everything in my power to make tha
t happen,” I said. “But I’m only your uncle, well, your grand-uncle, and your mother has already told me she wants you to live with your grandmother Jesusita.”

  “I don’t want to live with her,” he said.

  “Your mother is still your mother, even if she has to go to jail. She has the final word.”

  He considered this and responded, not with a child’s petulance, but like a negotiator. “Can I live with you if she says I can?”

  “If she says you can, then, yes,” I replied. Now was not the time to explain how unlikely that was. “Angelito, wherever you live, I promise you I’ll never be far away”

  He nodded. “John, too?”

  “That’s kind of up to John,” I said. “Do you want me to get you a night-light?”

  “Can you stay here for a little while?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I noticed the book on the nightstand. “Shall I read to you?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I opened the book where he had folded the edge of the page and read him the story of how Ulysses outwitted the Cyclops.

  The next day, I took Angel to visit his mother at the Hollywood station. He seemed completely unintimidated by being in a police station. For greater privacy, I browbeat the sympathetic watch commander to let Angel see his mother in the small attorney interview room. The room was soundproofed, but equipped with a one-way mirror to allow the cops to make sure contraband was not passed. While Angel visited his mother, I stood outside reading the autopsy and ballistics reports. The cause of Peter Trujillo’s death was a single shot through the back of his head. My eye stopped. The back of his head? The report asserted that the entry wound was six inches from the base of his neck and had lodged in the middle of his forehead. She had shot him while his back was turned to her. That was a problem if I was going to argue self-defense.

  I looked into the interview room. Vicky was holding Angel by the shoulders, apparently berating him. He faced her down like a little soldier, but then she released him and backed away, crying. He held his martial posture for a moment longer before breaking down and approaching her. His posture communicated pity, fear and anger all at once. She wiped her tears and spoke to him again. He stared at his feet and nodded.

  I was repelled by her manipulation of him and tried to concentrate on the ballistics report to keep myself from bursting into the room and lecturing her. The bullet that the medical examiner had dug out of Pete’s head was the same caliber as the ones the cops dug out of the wall. The cops had also found a .22-caliber bullet lodged in the baseboard near the front door, but since it seemed to be unconnected to the shooting, they assumed it was from an earlier incident. I made another note. Unaccounted-for bullets was the kind of detail that made cops look stupid on the stand and confused juries into reasonable doubt.