Illegal (8 page)

"First, because I love my work. Second, I'm engaged to Cullen."

"Funny, you didn't say you
love
Cullen."

"Stop it, Jimmy."

"Okay. Okay. I just thought that you and me and Adam—"

"Dammit! You need to get some help, Jimmy. Face the facts."

They were both quiet a moment. Then her face softened. "I'm sorry. You must be hurting. I heard about Judge Rollins."

"Yeah. It stinks."

She gave him a look both tender and compassionate, a queen tossing alms to a beggar. "But Jimmy, it's not like you to run away."

"Leaving first thing tomorrow."

She pursed her already puckered lips, giving the optical illusion that she wanted to be kissed. But as Payne knew, she was processing information. After a moment, she said, "Is there anything I can do to help you?"

"Maybe let Adam sleep over tonight."

A shudder went through her body, as if an icy wind had chilled her. "Not this again, Jimmy. Please."

"I'm not gonna kidnap him or anything. I'll take him to school tomorrow and—"

She slapped him. Hard. An open palm against the face, a
crack
as if she'd smacked the volleyball. He staggered a step backward.

"Hey, Detective Payne," a man called out. "Careful, or I'll bust you for assault." Two other men hooted and honked like migrating geese.

The wise guy was Detective Eugene Rigney. A pair of plainclothes buddies with him, heading for the restaurant.

Payne didn't think about what he did next. He just did it. Leapt at Rigney, wrapped both hands around his neck, knocked him back into the restaurant window, the glass shuddering.

Payne heard himself screaming "bastard" and "suckered me" and "nothing left."

Heard Sharon, too, shouting at him to stop.

Saw the startled look in Rigney's eyes, his hands clawing at Payne's fingers.

Felt sparks flash down his spine, one of the other cops slugging him in the back of the neck. Then a punch to the kidneys that loosened Payne's grip and dropped him to the pavement. Then the hard-shoed kicks. His back. His gut. Inches from his nuts. Cops were great kickers.

He curled into a ball, protecting the family jewels with one hand, his patched leg with the other.

"Stop it!" Sharon shouted, pulling the men off him.

Rigney was coughing and squawking, his voice hoarse. "You fucking loser. If your ex wasn't a cop, I'd toast your ass right here."

"We oughta arrest him," one of his buddies said. "Assaulting an officer."

Sharon got between the men and Payne, who was on all fours, struggling to get to one knee. "Go eat lunch, guys," she told them. "No harm, no foul."

"No harm?" Payne said. "I think I have internal injuries."

"Shut up, Atticus."

Rigney spat on the sidewalk, muttered several multi-syllable words that all seemed to have "mother" in them, then led his pals inside.

Sharon crouched down and cradled Payne's head in her palms. Her hands felt cool to the touch on his blazing cheeks. He thought he might cry.

When she spoke, her voice was as sweet as a lover's lament. "Jimmy, I want you to get some help."

"I'll be fine once I piss some blood."

"Not what I'm talking about. You know what I mean."

"What?"

She pulled his face to her chest, his chin resting between her breasts. He could stay here a while. Like forever.

"Oh, Jimmy. Baby . . ."

Oh, man. How long since she called him that, her voice soft as a feather? How long since her eyes shone like silk, the color of honey?

"Jimmy. Listen to me. You can't see Adam tonight."

"No?"

"Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not ever."

Pain, hot as lava, boiled through his body. He felt his chest tighten, his stomach knot. He wanted to scream at Sharon to stop.

"Adam's dead," she breathed into his ear. "He's been dead over a year. A Saturday morning on the P.C.H. You were driving the car."

Payne's head throbbed. Boulders careened down a mountain slope, crashed into one another, shook the ground.

Still cupping his face, she wouldn't let him look away, even as his eyes moistened. "Why torture yourself this way? Why torture me?"

A boulder landed on top of him, crushing his skull, grinding him into dust.

Tears tracked down her face. "Our little boy is gone, Jimmy. It doesn't mean we should forget him. But we can't pretend he's still here. Do you understand?"

A tremble ran through his body.

"Jimmy! Answer me!" Her voice sharpening, a finger poked in his eye.

"I understand."

"Do you? Because it's not enough just to say it."

Nothing he could think of.

He'd visited therapists, studied the motel artwork on their walls, listened to their New Age music, all flutes and zithers. Answered their questions as they tiptoed around the stages of grief. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Blah-blah-blah.

Another shrink touted the "healing placidity of Zen." Oddly, the guy had nervous, fluttering hands with nicotine-stained fingernails. He told Jimmy a parable about a man being chased by a tiger. The man leaps off a cliff and grabs a vine. Looking down, he sees another tiger, waiting to devour him. Terrified, the man notices a wild strawberry growing out of the cliff. He swings on the vine and plucks the strawberry from its bush.

Now Sharon gently ran a hand through his hair. When she spoke, her voice was strained, a dam holding back a flood. "You have to accept our losing Adam. You have to move on, Jimmy. If you don't, you won't make it. You'll die."

Adam doesn't cry out. Just a
whoosh
of air from his lungs, a gurgling from his throat.

A man's voice from outside the driver's-side window.
"Lo siento mucho."

"El chico. El chico. ¡Dios me perdone!"

Lying facedown under a palm tree, Tino's chest was on fire. Moments earlier, Rey and his two idiot friends had ripped off the duct tape, removed the bags of cocaine, and dumped him.

Tino touched his chest, ran a finger around his back. Red and blistered, the tape shredding his skin. He felt dehydrated, disoriented, hungry. It seemed to be midday, the sun high in the sky. City noises. Traffic. Horns.

He got to his feet, blinked against the glare. Used hypodermic needles were scattered on the ground. The sound of splashing water. A large pond, a lake really, with a shooting fountain. He scrambled to its edge, drank from the water, which tasted of rust and algae. On a nearby path, two black women in nurses' uniforms stared at him, eyes alarmed, as if they'd just seen a mouse in the cupboard.

He tied the drawstring of his torn sweatpants and got to his feet. Not far away, towering skyscrapers gleamed in the sunlight. The tallest buildings he had ever seen. He must be in the United States, but where?

He wanted to get moving. What if Rey and the other two came back? What if
La Eme
was looking for him? Or the Border Patrol?

Stiff and aching, he walked along a path that ran past a row of palm trees. A filthy, bearded man in ragged clothes lay snoring alongside a metal shopping cart filled with junk. The man smelled of piss and vomit. Hands folded together on his chest like Tino's
abuelo
in the funeral home. Between the man's knobby fingers, an open bag of potato chips. Tino carefully pried the bag from the man's filthy hand. A grunt, a snort, and the man opened runny eyes that seemed to look in different directions.

"Fucking little greaser!" The man reached for a broom handle under his cart and swung wildly.

Tino ran.

Wherever he was, it was a scarier place than La Rumorosa with those
narcotraficantes
. Running along a path, he saw a boathouse at the edge of the lake. A park, he realized. A park in the middle of a city. He came to an intersection of two busy streets and read the signs. Alvarado. Wilshire.

He chose Wilshire. Ran past a sign for Westlake Avenue, another for Bonnie Brae. Kept running. Past big buildings and parking lots. Burlington. Union. Loma. Feeling stronger with each block flying by. Believing if he ran far enough and fast enough, he could find his mother. Knowing the foolishness of the thought almost before it was formed.

He heard a noise overhead and looked up. A helicopter with police markings. So low and so loud he was certain it had come for him. The Border Patrol? Or the F.B.I.?
They knew about the cocaine.
He saw the markings on the helicopter:
L.A.F.D.

The helicopter veered toward a huge building, hovered, then descended to its roof. A sign in front of the building:
Good Samaritan Hospital.

Tino remembered his mother reading him the story of the Good Samaritan from a Bible with pictures. Robbers attack a man walking along a road. They beat him and take his clothes and money. No one will stop and help the man. Someone from the Samaritan tribe comes along. He bandages the man's wounds, takes him to an inn, feeds him, and gives him money. And Jesus says that's how you get to live forever.

A really nice story. Except the stuff from the Bible never happens in real life. In real life, if you're lying by the road, bleeding, someone comes along and steals your shoes.

Tino untied his laces, pulled off his right shoe, removed the insole. There was the crumpled card his mother had given him. "J. Atticus Payne, Esquire." A very important man. One of the biggest lawyers in Los Angeles.

Tino studied the address. Delano Street. He had no idea how to get there. No money. No papers. But his mother had taught him to be brave.

"
You're my little
valiente."

He looked left. Looked right. Then he started walking.

Cars went by, but few people were on the sidewalk. When he spotted an Anglo woman, he asked in English where he could find a bus station, but she stepped off the curb to avoid him.

Two hours passed. The sleepless night began to take its toll. Fatigue crawled up his legs. Hunger gnawed at his gut.

A police car rolled past. The cop eyed him, suspiciously. Tino fought the urge to run. The police car kept going.

He stopped in front of a small, neat house and watched as a man with hands stained the color of carne asada fertilized a flower bed. The bed was filled with plants taller than Tino. Stems topped by purple and orange flowers shaped like birds' beaks.

"Flor ave del paraíso,"
the gardener told him.

Birds of paradise.

Beautiful. Tino had seen them once before, surrounding the house of a rich family in Caborca.

The gardener wiped his forehead with a handkerchief and offered cold water from a cooler. When Tino told him he was hungry but had no money, out came a chicken tortilla wrapped in foil. And then another. The gardener was from Loreto in Baja. He had been here seven years without papers, and that made Tino feel better. He showed the man the card of Mr. J. Atticus Payne, Esquire.