The Triggerman Dance (45 page)

"Right, John-Boy. Good luck with Holt. Shoot straight. Be impressive."

"
Hey John," said Sexton. "I'll give you a call tomorrow. We should talk."

chapter 29

Holt, ensconced within the Plexiglas cockpit of the Hughes 500, watched John Menden trot a radius through the helipad circle and climb aboard the craft. A moment later Holt felt the stomach-dropping thrust generated by the powerful engine. He loved it. He stayed low over the hills until he neared the freeway, then hoisted the craft up into an October night of breeze-polished stars.

"Need some milk?" his passenger asked.

Holt was in no mood for laconic humor, John's or anyone else's. He looked over at him, then back to the red ribbon of 1-5 taillights winding out below. He banked the chopper hard to the left, very hard, which pushed his shoulders against the seat back, then corrected hard right and down, gunning the throttle almost all the way, which made his head feel like it could float off his neck. The helicopter dove like a hawk. What strong joy it was to fly a chopper when he was high on Scotch. But not too high. He'd had three doubles with plenty of ice, and a big dinner. Just right for a visit to the birthplace of it all, he thought. He looked at John, thought again of his son, then turned away.

"Little Saigon, Mr. Holt?"

"We're making a stop first."

Holt flew the chopper north, over Santa Ana, then descended in a controlled dive so steep that John, to his right, braced one hand on the instrument panel and the other against his window. Holt felt as if his heart had shot through the bottom of the craft to plummet down on its own. Using a triangulation of his usual landmarks—Charles Keating's defunct Lincoln Savings Bank on 17th Street, the darkened campus of Santa Ana Junior College, and a water tower that declared this as the "All American City"—Holt easily spotted the bright yellow logo of the fast food restaurant. Even so, the picture was a little blurred, not what it would have been only a year ago. He refused to think about his eyes. Instead, he thought about the rage he was beginning to feel, and the wonderful clarity he would feel after the rage passed. Yes, he thought, if I can make it through the Red Zone then things will become clear. He eased his fabulous rate of descent and spiraled gently down toward the building. The deceleration brought his heart back on board, returning it to his chest.

"Your gut still with you?" he asked.

"Somewhere in there."

"This is it."

Holt looked inquiringly into John's face. The young man had his usual placid expression, but the pupils of his eyes were big. Over the days, Holt had decided that John's calm was one of intelligence rather than dullness. And he thinks I'm half crazy, thought Holt, maybe more than that.

He found room in the parking lot—easy, this late—and planted the Hughes on the ground. Looking through the cockpit glass and seeing the familiar walkway leading to the entrance, the red handrail, the planter alongside it filled with daisies, the cheery yellows and reds of the building, the dancing burger of the logo, the windows filled with posters of discounted combos, Holt felt all the familiar hatred come rushing back into his soul. Easy now.

He told John to come with him.

He walked up the ramp, pushed open the door and stepped inside. He looked first to his left at the scattered faces in the dining area, the sea of bright yellow tables with swiveling red chairs, and the immense trash cans paired in each corner. He stared directly into the face of anyone who looked at him, but almost no one did. Inside his face, his eyes felt warm—almost hot—and he could feel the heat in them touch every face they settled on. He saw mostly Latinos. The usual.

"Look around you, John. This is our republic. View it."

"Yes."

"The place was full of people that day—the same kind of people you see here right now. Carolyn and Patrick sat there, by the window."

When Holt pointed, the two girls sitting there looked at him, then down, then back at each other. Holt, through his building fury, was pleased. His eyeballs felt extra warm.

He motioned John to come stand beside him. He spoke with clarity and force.

"The shooter was just a kid, born here. He actually had a brain. Did a year at a local JC, worked on the school paper. Wrote some articles with lots of exclamation points about soft flabby white people occupying a California that rightfully belongs to his people.
La Raza
—The Race. He built a little following. Of losers mostly, as those who follow tend to be. The reason he gunned down my wife and son was because his aunt claimed that Patrick had raped her. That was a preposterous lie, fed and fattened by the media. The murder also lent some credibility to his politics. Politics and hatred, John—bad mix. They were just finishing their lunch. Patrick saw it coming and tried to get between the bullets and his mother. He was successful. The bullet that stopped in Carolyn's brain went through Pat's neck first. It was a mortal bullet, but the other three he took were, too. A .32 slug glances around a little before it goes through. They have a relatively low velocity."

With every sentence of his history, Holt felt his anger heating up, approaching boil. And the anger brought him a little closer to Clarity. But before he felt Clarity, Holt knew he would have to go through the Red Zone.

He watched the few faces that had been confronting him now turn away. A group of girls twittered. Mothers tried to hush their babies, tried to keep their toddlers from eating the wrappers on their food. The girls started putting on makeup.

At times like this he just wanted to take out a good submachine gun and kill them all, but Holt knew the rage would pass into something more rational, and more effective.

In a far corner sat four gangsters, blue bandanas and chinos, dark flannels and black work boots. Holt stared at them for a long beat, guessing their ages: fourteen or fifteen, maybe. He saw three of them conferring—over his presence, likely—while one returned his gaze.

"This way, John."

He walked to the table and stood over it, sliding his right hand in his coat pocket. It was always good to let these people wonder, he thought. By the time he stopped walking, he had entered the Red Zone, where everybody he looked at was outline in a visible aura of warm infared. He could actually see it. It w pink more than red, really, and it wasn't bright and solid like rod of neon but muted and wavering, like a pink mirage surrounding each human shape.

Then he felt the very faint, first inkling of Clarity, an ic intelligent spot way back in his thoughts. He knew it was still long distance away. He knew it would come eventually, though piercing through the Red Zone like a beam of light through fog. He craved Clarity and disliked the anger of the Red Zone. He didn't trust it. Anger was red and it made his heart race and h hands shake, and made him want to do rash things. It made hi feel the cells that were reproducing without control inside him. But Clarity brought steadfastness to his vision and his limb Clarity allowed his eyes to see and his mind to work. You could ride Clarity, like a good machine, through thickets of confusion and rage, until you came out on the other side, and then you could see—really
see
—what you had to do.

"Look at these things," he said to John, nodding down ; the boys.

When Holt looked at him, John's hands were folded before him like a pastor beginning a sermon. His back was straight an his clear gray eyes—so much like Holt's own used to be—beheld unblinkingly the four boys sitting in the booth before them. Job was outlined in a warm pink aura.

So were the four young men in the booth. It felt strange to Holt to confront people so powerless yet so harmful. As a boy, he had killed rattlesnakes by cracking them by the tail like whip He was smart enough to do this only in early spring or late fall when the reptiles were chilled and slow. It fascinated him that; something could be deadly, yet helpless. Later, at the Bureau, the same wonderment came to him when he made his first arrest With very few exceptions, the crooks were afraid, confused and overmatched. But they could kill you, too. That was what kept your blood warm, your eyes keen and your hand steady. Any one of those nervous little men might be the one to shoot you dead with a cheap little gun. Many years later, when Holt began to lose respect for his quarry, he knew he had become vulnerable This was what led him to the more sophisticated game—the subversives, the assassins, the terrorists—because they were manifestly dangerous and they engaged his fear. As he gazed down at this tiny gang unit before him, at the clench-jawed little thing they called a leader, Holt thought: this is deadly vermin. Don't forget it.

Deadly, pathetic and outlined in red. One option, he thought again, is just to kill them all and let God sort them out.

Into Holt's mind now flashed the image of his wife laboring four steps across the patio. He blinked slowly, leaving his eyes closed for just a moment so that he could see Carolyn without a red halo on her. And his memory took another leap back, but a much deeper one this time, and it landed Vann Holt in a darkened bedroom many years ago with his wife up close beside him and their mouths locked together. He could smell her breath.

Then he opened his eyes and turned to John. "She was perfect for a while."

Holt shook the vision from his head, then focused on the boys in the booth. There they were, little lapsed Catholics wearing red halos. Truculent bastards, he thought, what do they have, maybe twenty-five mustache hairs each? Boys.

"Behold," he said. "Uneducated, barely literate. Lazy for the most part, due to the Indian blood. Given to binge drinking to replicate the old rites of peyote and mescaline. But a sixer of malt liquor doesn't give you interesting visions. Just gives you a bad mood. No future to speak of for these guys. They've never seen anybody from their streets really make it. What do they have to go on? Television? Isn't that right, boys?"

"We make it out if we want, man," said the leader. "We got roots and we got family here. We take care of each other. We die for each other, if we have to. What're you anyway, whitebread gringo shitface, a fuckin' philosopher?"

Holt looked at John. Still in a red halo. A little more red in it, maybe. But he was pleased to see the impassive expression on John's face, and the alertness of his eyes. He might be getting this, Holt thought: it actually might get through to him. He's capable of understanding.

"And that right there, what he just said, is the shame of it all," continued Holt. "See, John, these guys have the warrior's spirit inside of them. Most boys do—twelve to twenty-five or so. They're full of testosterone, bravery, idealism and anger. Perfect warrior material. He's not kidding—they'll die for each other. Do it all the time. Parties. Weddings. Funerals. Any event you can drive past in a car and pop some rounds at. But there's the rub. Parties aren't wars and drive-bys are for cowards. No war, no warrior. What you've got is a mean little creep with a flannel shirt. A goddamned blue rag wrapped around his puny head. It's a waste. And it's a shame and it killed my boy and wrecked my wife."

With this, Holt looked down at the boys again. "You remember shooting my wife and boy?"

"We didn't shoot nobody, man. That was Ruiz and Ruiz disappear."

"But there's some Ruiz in all of you. That's the part I'm talking to. I'm in your face right now because that kid was my son and that woman was my woman. Because I don't want you to forget what I look like. I want you to understand something, boys. I'm watching you. My men are watching you. We know you. We're here, even when you don't see us. We would have killed you all a long time ago if I thought it would do any good. But I haven't. It's not because I've forgiven you, or ever will. Not because you don't deserve to die. It's because there are too many of you and I'd have to kill you all. Don't have the time or the bullets for that. If I did, well, you'd be bleeding on that floor right now, like Patrick did after you shot him. Like my wife did. So don't ever think you got away with it. You didn't get away with anything. I've got your numbers. I'll call them in on the day I choose to. I'm all over you. Each and every one of you. I'm in the air, man. I'm the badass gringo ghost and you can't get rid of me. I'm everywhere. This is my turf. My blood is on it."