The Big Kahuna (Fox and O'Hare #6)(3)
“Yeah.”
“So she’s not coming back. Just sign the damn papers already.”
“Fuck, no. She thinks she can just move on. Erase the past like it never happened. Like I never happened. Well, she’s wrong.” He added twenty-five more pounds on each side of the barbell and sat down to do his reps, lifting in a steady rhythm, breathing in and out effortlessly.
I wiped my face with my towel and watched him for a minute. He’d been spending a lot more time at the gym since he’d separated from Mary. Sometimes, he worked out twice a day. “So my sister is having a barbecue,” I said. “Wanna come with?”
“Sure. If it’s okay with her.”
“Of course it’s okay. I don’t want to go alone. You’d be doing me a favor, really.”
“All right. When?”
“Day after tomorrow.”
Ten minutes later, I was in my Jeep, the engine rattling in the quiet of the morning. The rising sun colored the sky a rusty red and as I drove down the 62, I lowered the window so I could feel the last of the cool morning air. Lights came on in coffee shops and diners like eyes blinking open. At the station, I changed into my uniform and rushed to the conference room, only to find I was the last one there and the sergeant’s briefing had already started. I settled into a chair and avoided eye contact with Vasco, who was halfway through reading the previous night’s reports in his monotone voice.
“Stabbing on the 5500 block of Shadow Mountain Road. The suspect was upset that his mother was moving out to go live with a man she’d just met. He pulled out a knife and slashed the boyfriend’s arms three times. Dog attack on the 3200 block of Bermuda Ave. The owner had repeatedly been warned about his pit bull, but he let it loose in the yard and it jumped over the fence and attacked the neighbors’ kid. Fatal hit-and-run on the 8300 block of Chemehuevi, corner with Highway 62. Nothing yet on the runaway car. Tagging at the high school overnight. Second incident this week. That’s about it.” As he gathered his papers into a file folder, he looked around the room at all the deputies. “One last thing. There’s been a lot of chatter on social media about the Bowden incident. People see ten seconds of cell-phone footage and they think they know what happened. Don’t pay attention to that. We’re not here to be distracted by what people say online. We’re here to do our job. Stay focused.”
Vasco must have been in a rush because he left the conference room without commenting about my tardiness. Must be my lucky day, I thought. My shift was pretty quiet, too: a noise disturbance; a parked vehicle check; a dropped 911 call that turned out to be a butt dial; Marci Jamison once again trying to report her Ativan and Percocet stolen so she could get a replacement prescription. As I changed out of my uniform at the end of the day, I found myself making a mental list of everything I still had to do that night. Read for my ethnic studies class. Go over my history text to prepare for my final. Turn in my English paper by email. On my way out of the station, I walked past the dry-erase board where active cases were listed. One name made me stop. Guerraoui.
Efraín
I saw it happen. I wish I hadn’t, because it only brought me trouble. And I really wish I hadn’t told Marisela about it. That night, I was riding my bicycle on the 62, heading home after work, when the chain fell off my back gear. We used to have a car when we lived in Arizona, a Toyota Corolla we bought for $875 from one of the ushers at our church, but it broke down after we moved here and we couldn’t afford to repair it or buy another one. We lost $875, just like that. Sometimes, Marisela complains that people come to this country to get ahead, and all we’re doing is getting behind. I’m doing the best I can, I tell her, I can’t do more than that. What I don’t tell her is that we’d get ahead if we didn’t have her two sisters in Torreón to support. And the bicycle isn’t so bad—I got it for free from Enrique, and I can ride it almost anywhere. The only problem is the chain.
That’s what happened that night. I had to stop when the chain fell off. I pulled up to the sidewalk, not far from where the 62 meets Chemehuevi Way, and turned the bicycle upside down. Getting a chain back on its gear is easy enough, but it was dark and I’m farsighted, so I couldn’t see what I was doing. I don’t usually carry my glasses with me because I don’t need them, not for the carpet-cleaning service I work for during the day, or for washing linens at the motel in the evening. I got down on my knees and started draping the chain by feel, getting it back on the gear one link at a time. It took a while, and when I finally got it done, my hands were dirty. I raised myself up carefully, trying not to get any grease on my pants, holding my arms away from me, as if I were groping for something in the dark. That’s when I heard a car speeding toward the intersection and then a dull sound. Bump. Like that. I looked up, and the car was already making a turn onto the side street. The old man rolled off the hood and landed facedown in the gutter. And the car didn’t even stop. It went on as if it had only hit a can or a plastic bottle.
“You should call the police,” Marisela said.
I walked past her to the kitchen sink and squeezed dish soap on my hands, trying to work the grease off. “Did you forget what happened to Araceli?” I said. Araceli lived down the street from us in Tucson. A plump woman with big hair and a cackling laugh. She called the police to report a neighbor who was beating his wife, and when they came to take her statement, they found out she didn’t have her papers. Before she knew what was happening to her, Immigration was at her door. California is different from Arizona, at least that’s what people say, the laws are different here. But how could I take a chance like that?