The Renegades (27 page)

“Then? Well, then Terry Laws starts doing something that Terry Laws turns out to be very, very good at. He fishes. Terry is fast and fluent with the knots, he can cast hundreds of feet of line with the flick of a wrist, he’s a wizard with the squid jigs, and when it comes time to set a hook his big arms pull the rod back smoothly and quickly and not a single fish—not even a dorado weighing thirty pounds—breaks his line or rejects his hook. He’s all
over
the Bertram. Every time I look up, there’s Terry, hooked up, rod bent, line screaming out as a big fish takes it to the depths. Then he’s hustling along the high gunwale, trying to keep his line from tangling with the others and his fish from getting under the boat, sliding on the wet deck, slipping, righting himself. I know that if Terry goes over he’ll probably drown before we get him back up, but this fact doesn’t deter Laws one bit.

“So of course it’s Terry’s troll line that gets hit. He runs to the stern and grabs the rod and sets the hook and settles into the fighting chair. He braces his legs and draws back the rod into an acute bend, then bows to the fish, reels in a few feet of line, and pulls up tight to it again. I’m cheering while Laws fights this animal. After twenty minutes he’s sweating hard and his total line gain can’t be more than fifty yards. But after half an hour the fish starts to give up line and Terry reels his heart out and then, about seventy-five yards off the port side, the striped marlin launches itself skyward and his flanks buckle and flex in the sunlight and he crashes back into the ocean in a silver explosion. Fifteen minutes later Felipe gaffs the fish and drags it onto the deck where it flops and hammers and tries to get that sword into somebody, the comb on its back raising and lowering, gills gaping slower and shallower. When the fish is dead Terry hefts it in his arms for pictures, taken by Herredia himself. I’ve never seen him so just plain happy. The marlin weighs in at one hundred and seventy-nine pounds.”

“So Terry saves himself by fishing?”

“Don’t interrupt. That night back at El Dorado, Terry breaks his own alcohol ban and downs three double tequilas before dinner. He sways as we take our seats in the dining room, tries to blame it on the rolling of the boat. The women dine with us that night, a rarity in Herredia’s domain. They’re tastefully and expensively dressed and Terry compliments each one on her appearance. He says that Jesus loved prostitutes because they knew shame.

“After dinner, in the billiards room, we shoot no-slop eightball and we drink more. The stereo’s on and two of the women dance while the other two watch
Under the Tuscan Sun
. Terry pours a large glass of single malt and sits in a big leather armchair. It’s an old chair, seasoned by decades of use—Herredia’s use, of course—and Terry just plops right down in it and begins regaling the room with stories of the fishing day. He has to speak loudly to get above the stereo and the video. He talks about the faith necessary to believe that a fish will strike your lure. How it’s like making a woman fall in love with you. His next topic is what it’s like to kill a man, what it does to a soul. Ten minutes later his glass shatters on the tile after leaving a trail of liquid down his shirt and pants and Herredia’s good chair. He’s snoring.

“Oh yeah, I love the way this is shaping up. Herredia is leaning over the table to calculate a bank shot angle, and at the sound of the glass shattering he straightens and walks around the table to me. He taps my chest with the point of his cue stick, and it leaves a faint cloud of blue powder on my shirt. But his look surprises me. It isn’t the glower of boxed fury like the night before, but the soulful, sad expression that he had worn when he proposed the assassination of Hector and Camilla Avalos.

—It is over, he says quietly.

—Yes.

—Very dangerous.

—Carlos, you are correct in everything, but I ask you to give him one more chance.

—One more chance to do what?

—He’s not like this at home. But when he gets down here, he feels safe and brave and lucky. He thinks this is where he can fight his demons.

—Demons always win. He should not go where they are.

—I can guide him away from them.

—You said this before.

—Give the child a chance to be a man. Do it for our friendship.

—Coleman, you are not a fool, are you?

—No, sir.

—He was weak when you first came here. His hands were shaking when he tried to zip open the luggage on that very first night. Now all of him is shaking, not only his hands.

—You have my word. If I can’t get him to right himself, I know what has to be done.

—Consider: the desert all around us is waiting. He caught the best fish today. He is happy.

“I look over at the dancing women and the unconscious Terry and old Felipe sitting by the door with the shotgun leaned against the wall next to him. El Tigre has a stricken look, a look that tells me he already regrets what he’s about to do.

—He is yours.

—Thank you.

“I got Terry up early the next morning. I expected something—the sudden appearance of men I didn’t know, the racking of a slide, the metallic whisper of a blade clearing leather. But I made my muscles move and I loaded the car and I got Terry into the passenger seat and I drove away. We left El Dorado in the still darkness. There’s nothing darker than a Baja California night.”

The boy is nodding. His self-confidence is impossible to empty, even to diminish for more than just a moment.

“So this is also a tale of the foolishness of El Tigre,” he says.

I lean forward toward him. “I would lower the volume of my voice if I were you.”

He snorts but blushes. I love this boy.

“We’ve come to the part of the story where chaos has turned to opportunity, and opportunity has turned back into chaos. We’ve come to the part of the story where Terry Laws discovers the character of his own soul.”

“I’ll miss the drugs, sex and rock and roll.”

“There will still be plenty of that. Another cognac?”

“I’m blitzed.”

“Then I’ll continue the story on another night. It deserves more than a drunk audience. And of course, I want to talk to you about Kick.”

The boy looks at me as sharply as he can. His eyes are fine but I know his thoughts are out of focus. He has impressive powers of concentration and tolerance to alcohol but there are limits to every power on Earth.

“Okay,” he says. “Kick. That story deserves more than a drunk teller.”

“I look forward to meeting your woman.”

“Yes.”

“For anything good to happen to us, she has to know that she was here, with us, from the very beginning. She must be part of our foundation. We’ve talked about this.”

“See you then.”

32

Shay Eichrodt
held out his big hands and Hood fastened the cuffs, but not too tight. He wore an orange jail jumpsuit rather than his light blue mental hospital jumpsuit. He had let his hair grow to a stubble but his face was clean shaven and still very pale.

Dr. Rosen guided him by one arm and Hood took the other. When they stepped outside, Eichrodt came to a stop and looked at the sky and the leafless trees and the efficient, unimaginative buildings of Atascadero State Hospital.

“Mmm.”

“This way, Shay,” said Rosen.

Hood introduced Eichrodt and Rosen to Ariel Reed, and explained again to Eichrodt that she was one of the Los Angeles District Attorney prosecutors who had seen to his commitment at Atascadero.

He towered over her as he offered her both hands. She stepped into his shadow and shook them.

“Longer hair,” he said.

“Oh. Yes, I’m growing it.”

“Me, too.”

Hood explained to him once again that Ariel would be riding back to jail in L.A. with them, if he was still willing. Hood reminded him of his rights under
Miranda
and told him that Ariel’s purpose was to listen to his story and advise the District Attorney’s office on how to proceed. This was considered an informal interview; as spelled out in the affidavit, Eichrodt would say nothing under oath, nothing said could be used against him in court. Hood told him he could change his mind now about having a DA present, or change it at any point during the trip.

“You need to read and sign this,” said Hood.

He held out a clipboard and Eichrodt took it in both hands, turned his back to the sun and read it. It took him almost five minutes. When he was done he nodded and took Hood’s pen and wrote his name at the bottom of the second page, above “Defendant.”

They drove down the highway through grasslands green from rain and stands of oaks. The trees along the road cut the sunlight into slats. In the rearview Hood saw Eichrodt staring out, hardly blinking. A deer watched. Hood glanced at Ariel and she was looking out, too, the bars of sunshine passing across her and moving back to Eichrodt.

Eichrodt told his version of the arrest. His memories seemed clear, even though his language at times came slowly and he would have to wait for the arrival of some words. He used slang and profanities that he hadn’t used the last time Hood talked to him.

Eichrodt said that he was returning home to Palmdale from a bar in Victorville. He was working nights. He’d get off at midnight, close the Hangar at two a.m., drink and do occasional drugs with the bartender and assorted friends until three or four, then drive home. Same damned bar every night, same damned people. The Hangar was a dive but the beer was cheap. He was in fact high on alcohol, methamphetamine and PCP when they pulled him over. The deputies were a little blond creep and a fag muscleman. He showed them his license and got out of the truck like they said. The muscleman told him to turn and face the truck and put his hands behind his back and that’s what he did. The muscleman cuffed him. Eichrodt was looking down at the dusty red paint of his truck, he said, when the first of the baton blows caught him between his shoulder blades. He turned and charged the deputy, using his head as a battering ram. Both deputies used their clubs.

Eichrodt looked out the window while he talked. Hood saw that he was only partially concentrating on the story. Another part of his attention was out in the rolling central California hills.

Eichrodt said that at first they tried to take him down with leg and body shots but he wouldn’t go down. The meth made him fast and the PCP killed the pain and he believed that he would somehow win the fight and get away. He caught the muscleman once in the forehead, hard, but that was the only good shot he landed. The fight lasted several minutes and he was panting like a dog. His eyes ran with blood and it was hard to see. He estimated that he was hit thirty to forty times, approximately ten when he was on his hands and knees and too damned worn out to protect himself. He said cops don’t usually hit the head because it’s bloody and too easy to really mess a guy up, but these fuckers hit his head a lot. There was blood on both deputies’ shoes and on the pants of the muscleman. Some of his teeth were on the ground. By then the handcuffs had cut into his wrists.

The next thing he remembered was waking up in a hospital. Bunch of people taking pictures of him, flashes pissing him off. This memory came to him only recently, he said. Later there was a pretty nurse named Becka who had freckles and green eyes. His stitches hurt and smelled bad. Then came the long days in the hospital bed. His stitches didn’t hurt anymore but they sure did itch. Then came surgery to reduce the swelling in his brain, the groggy weeks of not understanding what had happened or what was happening.

After that were the long confusing hours in court. All he understood about it was that his ass was in a sling and he couldn’t remember a fuckin’ thing. The worst part was remembering, then not having words to describe the memory, then having the memory go away again. He said that memory is the only thing that means squat, without it we’d all be just rocks.

Eichrodt told them that after court he wanted to die, and at the mental hospital he hung himself with a strip of bedsheet but the ceiling sprinkler came off from his weight and he stood there in the middle of his room with the noose around his neck and the water coming down, freezing his ass off instead of being dead. But a few days from then he started feeling a little better, and the medications began to free his memory but he thought that the cold water had something to do with it and son of a bitch if Dr. Rosen hadn’t told him that an early American mental therapy was dunking the maniacs in cold water hoping to shock them out of being nuts but it didn’t do nothing but half freeze them. He said Dr. Rosen was a genius.

Hood drove and listened and said nothing. Ariel turned in her seat so she could maintain eye contact with Eichrodt, and she made notes.

She asked if the deputies had their guns out when they approached his car.

He said they did not.

She looked at Hood, then back at Eichrodt and asked him if they said anything to him.

He said nothing but license and registration and step out of the car, please. During the whole time they were whackin’ on him all they did was grunt, like it was just a job they had to get through.

She asked about the white van, Lopes and Vasquez.

He said they kept asking him that in court. And he kept trying to remember and maybe talked himself into remembering something that never happened. Because if you can forget something that did happen, you could just as easily remember something that didn’t, right? But now he knew he never saw any white van or any dead men or any money. He said he didn’t see one goddamned interesting thing that whole night until the cops’ lights showed up in his rearview mirror and he pulled over and the little blond and the muscleman got out. And if he really had taken all this money and put it in his truck, then the deputies must have found it and turned it in, right? Right? So what was the big deal?

They drove for a while in silence.

“Man,” said Eichrodt. “Did you see that hawk back there?”

“It was a red-shouldered,” said Ariel.

“Had something in his claws.”

“Looked like a gopher,” said Ariel.