The Tattooed Soldier (39 page)

“We'll take it,” Frank said finally. “How much you want for it?”

“Twenty bucks.”

“Sold.”

Monica disappeared into the apartment and returned with the gun wrapped in a musty dishrag. She handed it to Frank.

“Don't want it no more,” she offered as he inspected the contents. “I got a nephew, he's real little, just two. I'm afraid he's gonna find this thing.”

Antonio gave her one of José Juan's twenty-dollar bills.

“Here, take these too,” she said, reaching into her pocket.

Antonio stretched out his hand, and the girl dropped a dozen or so bullets into his palm. They looked like pieces of brass candy. Glancing up, he saw her smiling broadly, as if she had unburdened herself of an awful weight.

Back on the bridge over the Los Angeles River, Antonio soon forgot about the girl. He was mesmerized by the little packages of explosive fire that were rattling in his pocket. One of these bullets would do the job. He would make the soldier swallow this brass candy. Frank had the gun tucked under his sweater and would soon teach him how to use it properly.

Antonio was one step closer to killing the soldier from San Cristóbal. The man in the park who ate ice cream after murdering Carlos and Elena.

Antonio asked Frank if he could hold the gun.

“Be my guest,” Frank said. “Better you than me.”

Metal tucked inside his jacket now.
I was a bus boy once, but today I am an armed man. Antonio of the dirty plates is a warrior today.

Bullets seemed to be the only instrument capable of transmitting Antonio's will. They were projectiles of rage. He thought he might be scared once he actually had a gun, but instead the .22 was fueling waking visions of spinning blades and blunt instruments, flamethrowers and avalanches of falling boulders. Obstacles would be crushed, smashed and destroyed, in the same way the buildings on Crown Hill had been flattened. There would be an evenness to the world again, land empty for a new beginning. Bulldozers converging on the chess player with the shaved head, the man who carried corpses in an envelope.

 

18.
HALLOWEEN

 

The flashlight gave off a weak yellow crescent. Antonio was afraid the batteries would run down and they would be stuck in pitch darkness. They had set out from the tunnel opening twenty minutes ago, slogging along the muddy floor, stepping around puddles of brownish water. Frank stopped once and pointed the flashlight beam at the tunnel ceiling, a broad arch of crumbling concrete the texture of sandstone. Moving the light across the brown-gray surface, he found what he was looking for, a three-foot-long stalactite glistening ice white. A drop of water fell from its tip.

“Ain't that pretty,” Frank said. “It's all that rainwater from Bunker Hill. All that rain that falls on the stockbrokers. That water has minerals and it leaves this shit right here.”

Antonio had only a vague idea what Frank was talking about. He just knew they were somewhere under downtown and that the plan was to walk deep into the tunnel and take target practice so that no one would hear the shots. Frank carried the gun and a plastic milk crate, Antonio the bullets and some bottles and cans. They walked a little farther and set up their firing range, stacking the bottles and cans on the milk crate. Frank took the gun from his jacket and handed it to Antonio.

“How do I load it?” Antonio asked.

“What do I look like, a thief? I ain't never fired a gun in my life.”

“But I thought…”

“I guess you just open up the round thing there and put the bullets in the little holes.”

Antonio fumbled with the weapon and finally opened the cylinder, taking six bullets from his pocket and slipping them in. He had spent the morning counting his fifteen bullets over and over again, and now the plan was to take nine practice shots. That would leave him with enough ammunition to keep the gun fully loaded. Frank said it was important to practice, even if it was just nine shots, so that he would have a steady hand when he confronted the soldier. Plus they had to test the gun to make sure the girl in the projects hadn't sold them a dud that wouldn't fire at the crucial moment, when he was toe to toe with his prey.

With Frank standing safely behind him and pointing the flashlight beam at the target, Antonio raised the gun. He closed one eye and looked at the sight, a tiny bead at the end of the stubby barrel. Then, holding the gun with two hands, he shut both eyes and pulled the trigger. It was a little harder than he expected, the metal stabbing into his finger.

The gun went off with a flash he could still see behind his eyelids, the explosion echoing with a thunderous clap against the curved tunnel walls. Antonio was temporarily deafened, and blinded too, because Frank dropped the flashlight in a belated attempt to cover his eardrums. He picked it up again and pointed it in Antonio's face.

“You okay?” he yelled.

“Yes.”

Frank turned the beam of light toward the milk crate. The bottles and cans were still in place. “I think you need to get closer,” he said.

Antonio moved forward until he was about twenty feet from the target. At this range he could easily hit the bottles with a rock. Frank covered an ear with one hand and held the flashlight with the other. Antonio fired again and struck the crate, knocking the bottles over without breaking them.

“Hey, not bad,” Frank said. “Get even closer.”

After rearranging the target, Antonio stood just five paces away and fired two shots in quick succession, shattering a bottle with the second one. He took two more steps forward, until he was within easy spitting distance of the milk crate, and fired two more shots, knocking off a can.

“I guess that's the trick,” Frank said. “Get as close as you can.”

Antonio understood immediately. The secret of the gun was to think of it as a knife. Press it close to the soldier's torso and then fire. Think of it as stabbing, the bullet cutting fire into his flesh, tearing at muscle and capillaries. Antonio liked the directness of the act, the idea that he would have to be close enough to the man to feel him breathe.

What a beautiful thing this gun was. It fit neatly in the palm of his hand, a small chunk of metal and oiled mechanisms, and yet it equalized everything. When the orange-haired girl in the projects sold him the gun, she gave Antonio the power to take the tattooed soldier's life. The advantages of his military training and muscular physique would be erased by this palm-sized chunk of metal. Antonio felt tall again. He remembered that the soldier was a small man, a pipsqueak. Killing him would be child's play.

With a gun anyone could be a killer. Guns were very democratic instruments, Antonio decided. They did not discriminate. With guns the weak became strong, the frightened brave. Anyone who held one became invincible. A tattooed soldier, a teenage girl. Even a poor, timid bus boy who slept in a cave.

*   *   *

The television droned in the rear office of El Pulgarcito Express, a small black-and-white affair with a butterfly antenna. Duarte crouched over the set and adjusted the antenna's metallic arms to make the image on the screen stop jumping. He was trying to get Channel 52, a Spanish-language station with a notoriously weak and unpredictable signal.

“
Cabrones
,” he said, twisting one of the knobs. “They're too cheap to get a stronger transmitter. Just a few thousand more, but they won't invest it. Typical Latinos. Skinflints.”

Frustrated, he turned to the other Spanish station, Channel 34, but quickly changed it after encountering a commercial for Jabón Palmolive.

“News,” he shouted at the screen.
“Queremos noticias.”
Finally he settled for one of the English-speaking stations.

Longoria stood next to Carlos Avilés, watching Duarte play with the TV. The boss had told them to come back here and see what was happening.

“It's those police officers,” Duarte said, “the ones that beat up that
negro.
The verdict is in.” Seeing that Carlos looked perplexed, he added, “They put them on trial for beating up that big black guy, remember? On the videotape.”

Longoria remembered the case well, although he had not been following the recent developments. Duarte finally got a clear signal and stood back, eyes fixed on the image of a room filled with Americanos in suits. They all seemed to be holding their breath.

At the announcement “Not guilty” Duarte punched his fist into the air, repeating the gesture as the television called out “Not guilty” again and again.

“
¡Eso!
This is really going to hurt the blacks,” he gloated. “They're really eating shit now.”

“Congratulations,
jefe
,” said the office manager, ever the sycophant, patting Duarte on the back. “It's good news, no?”

“Of course it is, Carlos. Those blacks have been getting away with murder.
Maleantes
. This will teach them a lesson.”

Duarte looked like a man who had won a great revenge, his expression at once happy and meanspirited. Longoria left him at the television with the office manager, returning to the front counter to help Yanira. She always slowed down when she was working alone; the lobby, which had been nearly empty just a few minutes ago, was now half filled. Tired people with boxes and envelopes stood impatiently between rope barriers, the line almost to the door.

Two hours later, at 6:00 p.m., Longoria went into the back room with a stack of packages and saw that Carlos and Duarte were gone. The room was dark, but the television was still on, flickering white and gray. In a hurry because the lobby was still full, he dropped the packages on the table and was about to return to the front when something on the screen made him stop. A shot from a camera high in the air showed a group of young men and women, teenagers and children, running in and out of a building, objects in hand, as if engaged in a relay race. For a moment it seemed like a contest of some kind, a sport he had never seen before. A cluster of people stood around the front of the building, waiting to loop in and out of the doors. The gringos were always inventing new sports, and he wondered what this one was called. He wondered if the rules were as complicated as American football, a game he could never understand.

“Longoria!” Yanira pleaded from the front counter, and he went to help her.

An hour later the lobby was empty, as were the streets outside. Standing at the plate-glass windows, Longoria pondered the strange stillness on the sidewalk. The shoppers and commuters who crowded around the bus benches on most evenings were nowhere to be seen.

“It's quiet all of a sudden,” Longoria observed.

“Thank God,” Yanira said. “I'm tired.”

Vaguely troubled by the missing people, Longoria drifted around the office and soon found himself back in front of the television set. The station was switching from one image to the next, rapid fire, so fast that it was hard for Longoria to make sense of what he was seeing.

A large rectangle, four walls and a roof of flames, the picture so bright it seemed it might burn a hole in the screen. Cars with spider-web windows speeding away from an intersection in twilight, adolescent arms hurling projectiles at the metal cocoons, all of this seen from an eye in the air. A circle dance of young men around a kneeling woman, forearms and biceps spitting rocks at her back. An ancient ritual, a public stoning. “
SOUTH-CENTRAL
,” say the letters at the bottom of the screen. And then more flames, more burning rectangles, a whole row of them, a family of burning buildings. And now the eye returns to the ground, the eye is someplace completely different, seeking out the face of a black woman in a smart blue dress, microphone in hand. There she is, now she's gone. The camera pans. Where is she? the camera asks. The woman is lost in a jumble of faces and arms. People are stepping up to the eye. Why they are doing that? Why they are showing off their missing teeth and braces and silver caps to the camera? And there is the woman again, a reporter. Her mouth is open and moving, but Longoria can't hear what she's saying because there is no sound, just pictures. He is afraid to step close to the television to turn up the volume. The television is doing crazy things, and he might get an electric shock if he touches it. Young men and women in T-shirts mill around the reporter. They are Latino and white and black, all colors. “
CIVIC CENTER
,” say the letters at the bottom of the screen. The camera loses the woman again, looks for her, finds a police car instead. Black and brown and white arms emerging from the T-shirts rock the police car like a seesaw. The car flips over very slowly. When it crashes upside down Longoria can almost feel how heavy it is. And now people are standing on its exposed belly. They punch at the air and open their mouths to scream. Tiny flames begin to creep from the smashed windows. Déjà vu. The police car is on fire and people are laughing, showing their teeth to the camera again. Happy teeth. Burn and smile.

Another shot. A line of white helmets and shields, black batons held at the chest. Police officers, the
LAPD
.

What was happening on the screen was a battle bigger than anything Longoria had ever seen. It was being fought all over the city, by huge crowds, masses of people. Memories rushed forward, taking hold of him by the chest. Fire and laughter. Violence welling in the eyes of the crowd, the march of police forming battle lines. He could feel it now, this resurfacing of animal instincts. So much like the taste of blood that passed through the Jaguars when they entered a village, when not even the doe-eyed children and the farm animals were safe from their machetes and machine guns. Longoria, agent of disorder, carrying a lighter and a little can of fluid with a smell he really liked. To see this here in Los Angeles, fire dancing from house to house, singeing everything in its path, was to remember the names of villages turned to ash: San Miguel, Nueva Concepción, Santa Ana.