Night Is the Hunter (18 page)

D
onnally forearmed Junior to block him from pushing open the gym door.

The basketball stopped bouncing and the shoes stopped thumping the hardwood. All the kids were staring at Donnally and Junior.

“Get out of my way.” Junior's voice was low and pit-bull mean.

Donnally shook his head.

Junior set his feet and pulled back his right fist. He feinted with a left jab. Donnally ducked it, threw up a forearm to block Junior's right, then grabbed Junior's wrist and spun him around and into an armlock.

Junior kicked backward at Donnally's legs.

Donnally pushed him into and through the door and out onto the sidewalk and kept driving him forward until they were in the street near Donnally's truck.

Instead of bending Junior over the hood, Donnally swung him down onto the pavement.

Donnally locked his hand around the back of Junior's head, pressing the side of his face hard against the blacktop.

“Chico didn't kill Heredia, man. That's a lie. It wasn't him. He
wasn't nowhere near Twenty-Fourth Street. The Sureños took revenge on the wrong guy. Chico died for nothing.”

Donnally heard footsteps behind him.

He glanced over.

The kids had gathered in the doorway. Silent.

He figured Junior had been a good teacher. They were staying out of it, not jumping in.

“You told me it was a war,” Donnally said, leaning closer toward Junior's ear, “and it didn't make any difference who fell on the other side—or did that only apply to their people?”

Junior tried to look up at Donnally. “It ain't that, man.”

“Then what is it?”

Junior twisted his shoulder, testing to see if he could scoot from under Donnally.

It didn't work. Donnally held him firm against the pavement.

“Let me up, man.”

Donnally shook his head. “First you tell me what this is about.”

“I told you, I ain't no snitch.”

The word struck like a starter pistol.

Shoe soles thudded. The kids now yelling, “Get off him. Get off him.”

Junior may have convinced the kids not to become gangsters, but snitching remained a crime in the neighborhood.

Donnally felt hands grab his shoulders and arms wrap around his legs. He held on to Junior as he fell, pulling him up off the pavement. Junior yelped as his right shoulder popped. The scream caused the hands and arms to release, and Donnally let go of Junior's wrist and rolled free, then came up with his gun pointed at the tangle of bodies.

“Get away from him.”

Heads turned toward him, then most of the kids rose and backed off. Two kneeled by Junior, who lay grimacing, but silent.

Even under his jacket, by the angle of his arm Donnally could tell that Junior's shoulder was dislocated.

Donnally felt for his cell phone, surprised that it was still in his pocket, then punched in 911.

Sirens rose in the distance, angling in from north and west. The kids next to Junior stood up and trailed behind the others back into the gym.

The other thing they'd learned in the neighborhood was how not to become witnesses.

Donnally slipped his gun back into his holster just before the first patrol cars rolled up to the building and came to a stop facing each other in the middle of the near lane.

He pulled out his retirement badge as the arriving officers got out of their cars.

The older of the two glanced at the badge, nodded at Donnally, then looked down at Junior. “What happened?”

Now Junior spoke. “I fell down.”

The officer rolled his eyes, then shook his head, “Yeah, right.”

S
tanding outside the ER, Donnally heard neither a groan nor a yelp when the doctor eased the head of Junior's upper arm bone back into its socket.

The last thing he'd heard Junior say as the orderlies guernied him inside was, “I don't want no drugs. Just jam it back in.”

The swinging door opened and Junior walked out, his right arm in a sling and a scowl on his face, heading toward the exit.

Donnally stepped into his path.

Junior tried to cut around.

Donnally blocked him.

They stood facing each other in the hallway. Foot traffic and wheelchairs of the recently injured and wounded flowed around them like rough water around a boulder.

“You sure you want to do this again?” Donnally asked.

“That's up to you, man.” Junior looked past Donnally toward the ER exit. “I got things to do.”

Donnally grabbed the front strap of the sling. “I don't think so.”

Junior lowered his voice. “Let go of me. You're in over your head. You don't got a clue what this is about.”

“Then give me one.”

“Let go of me.”

“I'm holding on until you agree to sit down and tell me.”

Donnally tilted his head toward the corner of the small waiting area. The room was nearly empty. An older couple sat huddled together along the near wall. A mother with a baby in her arms sat in the center row.

Most of the people with friends or relatives in the ER were standing in the hallway. Anticipation or hope or fear was keeping them on their feet and moving to and from the vending machines or outside to make cell-phone calls and back.

Donnally released his grip on the strap and guided Junior over to the chairs where they sat down.

“Let's have the clue,” Donnally said.

“Chico died for nothing. He didn't shoot Felix Heredia.”

“You already said that. Who really did it?”

“I keep telling you, man. I ain't no snitch. I'll take care of business myself.”

Donnally was getting tired of the “I ain't no snitch” line and was annoyed at it and at Junior. It was starting to sound childish, like infantile posturing.

But there was no way to force Junior to rethink who he was and wanted to be, his self-understanding and his place in the world, in the few days left before Israel Dominguez's execution.

Janie had talked often about the psychotherapy she did with Iraq and Afghanistan veterans as giving them light, sometimes in flashes, sometimes in beams, to take back up the long, dark tunnel of their lives, but Dominguez's time was too short, and Junior's tunnel was too long.

The only tactic left was to try to become Junior's ally.

“You aren't taking care of anything on your own, unless you can handle a knife or a baseball bat or shoot left-handed.”

Junior shrugged. “Then I'll wait. The guy ain't going nowhere.”

Donnally stared at Junior. There was no way to get through to him. He needed to be an outlaw. That's who he was. For all the changes he claimed he'd been making, for all the outreach work he'd done, he couldn't leave it behind. The closest he'd ever get was the borderland, like the kids at the gym. He'd never be a snitch and he'd never be a witness.

Maybe, like Israel Dominguez, he wanted to be Rumpelstiltskin.

I don't even exist in your world.

Except an outlaw wasn't just an outsider, he was someone who took the law into his own hands, or became a substitute for the law, and being an outlaw was the only way Junior knew of being a man.

But Benaga was different. Benaga was—

Donnally's train of thought got hijacked by an image of Benaga being debriefed by the FBI, the DEA, and by Chen and Grassner. Sitting in a hotel room smoking serial cigarettes, drinking coffee after coffee, agents taking notes, getting little adrenaline bumps as Benaga named names and described crimes, at one point getting around to talking about Twenty-Fourth Street and fingering Chico for the murder of Felix Heredia.

“Then tell me why Heredia was killed.”

Junior looked over, but his eyes were dead.

“It was Benaga, wasn't it? Benaga killed Heredia and then blamed Chico and then Chico's death closed the case.”

Junior didn't answer. Just stared at the blank wall across from them.

More of it organized itself in Donnally's mind. The single fact
of Benaga as an informant had become the piece that made the puzzle into a picture, or revealed the picture at the heart of the puzzle.

“Chico's mother said he ran away from San Francisco to Salinas, wanting to get out of the Norteños.”

Donnally saw Junior's lips move, an involuntary motion. He couldn't hear the words, but he knew what Junior had said.

Blood in, blood out.

That part wasn't snitching. That was a fact. One that in Junior's mind implicated none of them.

In Donnally's mind, it implicated every one of them.

“Benaga didn't need to do anything,” Donnally said. “
La Mesa
in Pelican Bay ordered the hit to make Chico an example for anyone else who wanted out.”

Donnally watched Junior's shoulders slump as he talked.

“
La Mesa
knew Benaga killed Heredia,” Donnally said. “That's why the question of why Chico would kill for the gang one day and try to break free on the next didn't come up, didn't trouble them. He hadn't.”

Junior took in a breath and exhaled, lowering his head, weary and resigned.

It was as though by Donnally figuring out what had happened, by possessing that information and being in a position to act on it—by taking it out of Junior's hands—he'd deprived Junior of his manhood.

And it wasn't that hard to take away, for in Junior's world it was so short. The distance between boyhood and manhood was the three-foot arc of a six-inch blade or a half-inch trigger pull.

Junior was a man because he engaged in acts of violence. And
that first, original act was all it took to make the metamorphosis from boy to man, or at least for him to think he had.

But as a bystander, one who couldn't wield a knife or pull a trigger, he was no longer—could no longer be—a man.

Junior's manhood needed constant renewal, regeneration through acts of violence, otherwise he would devolve back into a child.

Donnally felt like reaching over and twisting Junior's arm out of its socket again. It was probably the only way to keep him from getting himself killed.

He thought of a Vietnam-era newsreel his father had placed near the end of
Shooting the Dawn,
a correspondent quoting a U.S. major saying, “We had to destroy the village to save it.”

“You really think you have a chance against Benaga?” Donnally asked.

Junior shrugged. They both knew the answer. Junior's sense of his own manhood would require him to go after Benaga head-on, and he wouldn't survive. He'd destroy himself trying to save himself.

Donnally noticed a poster encouraging HIV testing, a photo of a woman sitting in a doctor's office, and wondered what Junior thought of women who, by definition, weren't men. But he didn't wonder for long. The answer was obvious. They were nothing but, or nothing more than, plastic Madonnas.

He asked the next question anyway. “Is this the way your grandmother wants you to live your life?”

“She got no say about it. My job is to protect her and I've done okay.”

“And who's going to protect her after you're dead? You really
think Benaga will keep protecting her from the Muslim Nation after he kills you?”

Junior didn't answer. The question revealed the idiocy of Junior's way of thinking, his view of the world.

Donnally shifted to a question Junior could answer.

“Why did the Norteños kill Heredia? What did he do?”

Junior shrugged again. “Nothing.”

“That's not an answer.”

“Then check your calendar.” Junior looked over, smirking. “Don't all you gringos use them little date books?”

Junior glanced at the only other people now sitting in the waiting room, along the opposite wall, two young Hispanic men in hoodies and jeans, low-riding their chairs.

Donnally had been so intent that he hadn't noticed the elderly couple and the woman with the baby leave, and he hadn't seen the others come in. He couldn't tell whether the two were real gangsters or were just playing the part.

The two men stared at Junior but looked away when he locked his eyes on theirs. The test of wills was over in a second, and Junior, even with his arm in a sling and fresh scabs on the side of his face, had won.

“There's no such thing as being even,” Junior said. “No eye for an eye. I lose one eye, you gonna lose two. I lose one tooth, I'm gonna break your jaw.”

The two men rose from their seats, gave Junior what they considered a manhood-restoring glance, then walked out.

Donnally's mind flashed back on the Norteño's and Sureño's shooting at each other on the sidewalk in front of him. It happened ten years ago, two weeks before Heredia was murdered a block away. He realized that he'd fixed in his mind that the event
was somehow enclosed and complete with a beginning, middle, and end.

Now he understood he was wrong.

It hadn't ended.

“Mission Street. My shooting. You mean Heredia was killed in revenge for the Norteño who died out there?”

Junior smirked again. “You just figuring that out now, Sherlock?”

Donnally turned toward him. “But I killed him, not the Sureño.”

Junior shook his head, disgust on his face.

“Man, I can't believe you was ever a cop. You don't get how any of this works. If I push you into the path of a car, your people don't blame the driver, they blame me.”

D
riving away after dropping Junior off at his grandmother's, Donnally realized he might not have yet grasped the logic of the crimes, but at least he understood the sequence, the mechanics.

First was the cross fire between the Norteño and the Sureño on Mission Street in which he was shot and in which he'd killed them both.

Second was Heredia's murder on Twenty-Fourth Street to avenge the death of the Norteño.

Third was Chico's murder.

The law enforcement theory was that the Heredia murder in San Francisco was the work of the Norteños and Chico's murder in Salinas was the work of the Sureños.

If Junior was right, that wasn't the truth. Chico's was the Norteños eliminating one of their own, one who no longer wanted to be one of their own.

Donnally felt a moment of vertigo as his car made the swing from Cesar Chavez Boulevard up the on-ramp to the freeway heading north, his mind pivoting too fast on the revelation of Benaga's role as an informant.

How did the police come up with the theory that the Sureños had killed Chico?

A dead gangster doesn't always mean that he was killed by an opposing gang.

Every cop knew the blood in, blood out rule.

Even more, how would the Sureños have come to believe that Chico had shot Heredia?

It wasn't like they were in the debriefing room and heard Benaga say it.

And Chico had never been arrested for it.

Even if the detectives put Chico's mug shot in a photo lineup, none of the witnesses to the Heredia shooting would've picked him out because he wasn't there.

If they had, Chico would have been in jail for the homicide, not standing in his mother's driveway in Salinas on the day he was murdered.

Donnally thought back on the wiretap affidavits written in the years after the Felix Heredia and Chico Gallegos murders. All of them contained the same paragraphs, in the same language, calcified by repetition until it seemed to have the solidity of historical fact.

What if it was all a lie?

And how could he find out?

With Chen and Grassner on the alert and maybe even desperate enough to act to bury the past and Judge Madding ready to pounce on McMullin, Donnally decided that the Hall of Justice wasn't the place to start.

Donnally exited the freeway just short of downtown.

And headed south.