Halfway House Page 10

  She walked fast, both hands on her purse. It took him a hundred yards to catch up to her and when he did, she whirled with a can of pepper spray, holding it out with a straight arm, finger poised on the red button. “Stay away from me, old man.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You will or else—”

  “I-I’m your father,” he stammered. He watched both her eyes and her finger. Now would be the perfect time to spray him. He deserved it.

  Twenty seconds passed and finally her finger moved before her eyes did. It jerked once, then followed the hand as it fell to her waist. Then her eyes moved and he watched her as she saw him as if for the first time. She’d surely seen pictures. She was probably trying to merge his older features with those of a young surfer. She probably saw facets of her own face in his. She stopped examining and shot him straight through the heart with a clinical glare. “Where have you been?” she asked, like he’d only been gone a week.

  “Here and there.”

  “You come home for a while?”

  “I’ve come home to stay.”

  She seemed to acknowledge the answer, but he wasn’t sure until later, because tears suddenly filled her eyes. His filled as well and they stood there three feet apart staring at each other, crying silently. Every so often a sob would escape. Every so often they’d smile.

  Obituary from the Daily Breeze

  Maria Doloros Rivera passed last night after a long illness at her home in San Pedro. She is survived by her husband, Renee Rivera, and her two sons, who are currently serving in the merchant marines. Services will be held at Our Lady of the Sea on Sunday at 3:00 PM.

  She sighed when she died, and that sigh carried her on and on and on, her soul rushing free like air from an errant balloon. At last she’d been liberated from the pain: the pain of her cancer that had metastasized throughout her torso, the pain of her sons being so far beyond reach and caring, and the pain of her beloved Polo, who’d spent the last month crying beside her bed late at night when he’d thought her asleep.

  Spread beneath her rising soul lay death and regret; above and heavenward lay redemption. She’d been a God-fearing, churchgoing woman her entire life and cherished the reward she was about earn. Suffused with a feeling of joy, she rose and rose, anticipating the touch of Mary, who would welcome her into the bosom of Heaven.

  The mists parted, revealing the great sprawl of Los Angeles beneath her. From Malibu to Rancho Palos Verdes, the coast was lit by lights. She picked out Hollywood in the far distance. Compton and Hawthorn shone brightly nearby. Beneath her lay San Pedro, every alley and nook and cranny known to her since she’d been a niña playing among the palms.

  She heard a snatch of tinny music. A song barely remembered on the edge of her mind, the music evoked a feeling she’d held tight to her breast through adulthood.

  Brightly colored confetti.

  The earthy smell of sawdust.

  The roar of a lion.

  And the ever-present Mariachi Clowns of the Chimera Circus.

  Her eyes sought what the memory told her must be there and she found it—a red and orange striped big top tent. Clowns with balloons. Vendors selling grilled corn, roasted peanuts and churros. Not everyday cinnamon churros, but those filled with vanilla and chocolate which were as rare as snow on the harbor.

  She tried to remember the last time she’d eaten a vanilla-filled churro.

  Had it been that long ago?

  Of course it had.

  Sadness blurred the edges of her vision as she remembered when Polo still had both arms and drank. There wasn’t much the family did together during those days except hide when he came home and pray that he’d pass out. And when they were too loud, or when Polo was in a foul mood, he’d unleash his left hand and share his mood in the most humiliating and violent ways.

  Maria found that she was drifting closer to the circus. Laughter and screams of delight filtered through the fabric of the tent, which was lit from within like a Japanese lantern. She’d loved the dog circus within the circus—Poodles, Pekingese and Chihuahuas walking tightropes, jumping through flaming hoops and riding atop the back of a pink-striped burro. She’d been entranced by the elephants—strange storybook leviathans that seemed unreal until their ticklish hairy trunks plucked a peanut from her tiny grasp. She’d been amazed by the trapeze artists, swinging death-defying acrobatics through the air as she and the rest of the audience gasped and cringed.

  She’d wanted to run away to the circus.

  She’d wanted the clowns to be her family.

  She’d wanted to escape the reality of her life and fill it with confetti and laughter.

  Her father had been just like Polo. Love and hate came fast and hard from hands forged by the life of a longshoreman. She’d wanted to love her papi, but he’d returned her hugs with pain. No matter what she’d tried, she couldn’t get him to love her like all of her friends’ fathers loved them, which was why she probably married Polo, to try again to please her father in this younger, handsome version.

  But she’d been unable to please and that failure led her to the realization that there was something wrong with her. Try as she might, just like with her own papi, her handsome young Polo would return her love with pain. She’d let it go on too long. Both of her sons felt her sadness and tried to stand up for her and she watched as each of them was beaten down until they had no more love to give—not even to her.

  Ten years ago she’d finally had enough. She told Polo that either he needed to get help or she’d leave him, and if she was unable to leave, then she’d kill herself and he’d have to explain to all to the men he worked with about why his wife was so unhappy that she’d rather be dead than with him. It didn’t take long for the doctor to discover a chemical imbalance. Polo was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and within a month was the husband she’d always prayed for.

  But for Polo the sudden realization of his problem had shocked his soul. With his treatment came the understanding of what he’d done, and the gravity of his abuse. No amount of apologies could come close to excusing the way he’d acted. Even if he’d been in the grips of a disorder, as a man he could not accept the results. He’d lost his children. He’d almost lost his wife. Every time he looked upon the hand that had caused so much pain, he felt self-revulsion to the point of nausea. So it was with the hope that his soul would reap the benefits of his particular retribution that he jammed his hand into a forklift and allowed the ten-thousand-pound container to slice away the offending appendage.

  But it didn’t slice.

  Instead, his hand and wrist had been pulped.

  By the time they’d removed the container and rushed him to the hospital, blood poisoning had ruined the rest of his arm. Thus he became One-Armed Polo—half a man, but a man he could live with and, more importantly, a man Maria could live with. Only she and his friend Cabellos knew the truth, that he’d done it for love. That demonstration bound Maria to Renee “Polo” Rivera like a thousand Hallmark cards never could.

  The triple strains of Mariachi came to her as if it were yesterday. During her reverie, she’d come closer to the big top, and three clown Mariachi played happily as they welcomed her to the circus.

  Was this her heaven?

  Was this her reward for a life of pain?

  She giggled like the child she’d once been as she drifted closer. She made out more clowns and animals slipping inside the tent. She’d love to see inside, but her angle was all wrong. A sudden cheer went up and she wished to know, and just then the flap of the tent brushed aside, revealing a snippet of disaster involving a dozen clowns, a broken ladder, and a horse.

  A leering clown smeared red with paint exited and beckoned for her to join him. He seemed faintly threatening and reminded her of someone, but her wish to be young again overrode her well-honed self-defense mechanisms. She willed herself closer and drifted within his grasp. She felt a tug and then a jerk as she was hauled down.

  In his gloved hands he held a string. W
hen he pulled, she felt herself jerked.

  Wait.

  Where were her arms and legs? She tried to look for them, but her vision wouldn’t shift. Instead all she could see was the clown pulling her by a string toward the entrance to the big top. And then, as the crowd crescendoed with another scream to the backdrop symphony of a hundred Mariachi, she was pulled inside.

  A thousand clowns sat in tiered bleachers surrounding the empty center ring. Each one held a balloon and within each balloon was a face. The clowns laughed as the faces screamed. The clown pulling her sat down in a nearby seat, and as he did Maria began to spin, and it was in the spinning that she realized she was no longer flesh and blood. She was a balloon just like everyone else.

  A woman wearing a white dress with a blazing red necklace strode into the center ring and placed a featureless square on the ground. She left and was replaced by a squat man with an amiable smile in coat and tails. He stilled the chattery clowns and screaming souls with the single gesture of his finger to his lips.

  When all was silent he approached the square.

  He touched it with the toe of a boot then jumped back.

  The clowns oohed.

  He touched it with a finger then jumped back again.

  The clowns ahhed.

  He nudged it with his foot and the clowns screamed with glee.

  But when he sat full on it and crossed his legs as if he hadn’t a care in the world, the clowns gasped.

  No sooner was he sitting, than the man was leaping aside as a great rumbling filled the interior of the big top. The square was growing. A little at first, it began growing larger and larger until it dwarfed the squat man and took up the center of the ring. It continued to grow until it ripped through the fabric of the tent and soared into the sky. When it finally stopped, Maria couldn’t help but recognize it as one of the fixtures of San Pedro.

  When the house ceased growing and stood full-sized, the clowns released their balloons and began to clap. Whistles, laughter and raucous applause accompanied her as she joined the rest of the balloons soaring to a place above the halfway house. She hung there with her string dangling until a wind began to spin her about in a never-ending pirouette.

  She didn’t understand it.

  She’d died.

  She’d ascended.

  But she didn’t go to heaven and she didn’t go to hell, she went to the halfway house by way of a supernatural circus. Nowhere had she ever heard of such a thing in her Bible, and she’d read it from cover to cover.

  Chapter 12

  They escaped bumper-to-bumper traffic by jumping in the High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lane just before the cloverleaf where 110 met the 105. They sped past the Shrine Auditorium, Patriot’s Hall, and almost made it to Staples Center but were forced to make a detour at the 10. An accident. Construction. Unidentified flying objects. It could have been anything. You never knew in Los Angeles. And Bobby would never know, because he timed out somewhere on La Brea.

  When he returned, they’d slung onto Rampart, short-cutting to Van Nuys. The seizures were becoming more frequent. He needed medication, or else something really bad would happen, like a grand mal in the middle of a busy intersection. He worked his jaw muscles as they tightened. He thought he’d outgrown this.

  Trading the highway for a two-lane street bordered by parked cars on both sides was faster, but scarier by tenfold. Potholes, people stepping into the street, and the occasional mutt dog slashing across their path kept Split twisting the wheel and slamming on the brakes. Bobby had to give the boy kudos. Bobby had never driven, but he’d hitched rides his entire life and knew how much skill the boy possessed. Strapped into the vinyl backseat with a seatbelt assaulted by Mexican radio some crazy combination of heavy metal and mariachi and barely able to breathe from the coconut pimp oil dousing the carpet, Bobby tried to pretend the whole thing was a video game.

  Then Bobby timed out again.

  And returned along a suburban street.

  The radio off, Bobby could feel the tension in the car. Split stared straight ahead. They came to a stop sign. To their right stood seven young men in differing versions of red flannel, Bloods all the way. Bobby watched as Blockbuster nodded carefully. The nod was returned just as carefully. Split slipped the car into gear and rolled slowly past.

  They searched row after row of what Bobby had come to think of as the quintessential L.A. apartment building: long, two-story buildings perpendicular to the street with ground floor parking underneath. It seemed as if one architect had designed every apartment building in L.A., his saving grace a penchant for Miami Vice colors. Surrounded by tall palms, mauve, chartreuse, peach and lime green, apartments stood in plots of bougainvillea, birds of paradise bushes and impossibly green grass.

  The Chevy slowed.

  “That was it. I just passed it.” Split stopped the car in the middle of the street and looked in his rearview mirror.

  Blockbuster turned as well, peering back between the two front seats. “Then back the fuck up. There’s no one back there. It’s not like we’re sneaking up on anyone.”

  “Fuck it.” Split slammed the gearshift on the steering wheel to the right and gunned the accelerator, sending the car in reverse at a good enough clip to make Bobby’s head leave the seat. When the car stopped, his head slammed back.

  They were parked in front of a goldenrod-colored apartment building. A sixty-something man stood in the middle of the front lawn in his open bathrobe, tight blue shorts, a Goofy T-shirt from Disneyland and pink flip-flops, holding a thin leash attached to a quivering Chihuahua with its ass in the air. Both man and dog watched the neon green Chevy.

  First Split got out, then Blockbuster, and they met at the back door, which they opened for Bobby. Feeling the adrenaline now, Bobby stepped smartly from the backseat. Split led the way past the man with the dog. Bobby followed with Blockbuster bringing up the rear.

  The stairs were near the front on the parking side. They found Apartment 14 on the top floor toward the end. The name beside the buzzer read A. Verdina.

  Bobby felt a trill in his stomach. He was so close now.

  Next to the door was a two-pane window. Split tried to peer in, but pollution and the blinds kept him from seeing anything.

  Blockbuster glared at the lock for a minute, then brought his left arm down on top of the door knob. A second later, the door creaked open three inches. He turned and grinned. “My sister had the exact same lock on her door.” Then he stepped inside.

  Bobby followed and Split closed the door.

  The fetid smell of unwashed clothes and stained carpet assaulted them. Bobby and Split pulled their shirts to cover their noses and mouths. Blockbuster used a handkerchief that he yanked from his back pocket.

  A kitchen and dining room were on the left, a living room was on the right, and a short hallway led back to the bathroom and what appeared to be two bedrooms. Light filtered through crooked blinds, illuminating microblizzards of dust particles disturbed by their entrance. Old 1960s style low-slung couches hugged each wall, leaving a large clear area in the middle of the living room floor. Rather than framed pictures, pages of magazines had been taped to the walls, pages of small boys in underwear, small boys running around and sweating, and small boys sitting and watching television. None seemed younger than five or older than fifteen.

  All three men stared at the walls, trying to come to terms with the pictures and what they meant. As one they turned and looked from the couches to the cleared space in the middle of the floor. For Bobby, there was no doubt what it meant.

  “Hijo de mil putos! He’s a fucking perv.” Split jerked a 9-mm pistol from under his shirt and headed toward the back. “If he has a fucking kid locked up back here, I’m going to grease his ass.”

  Blockbuster leveled his gaze at Bobby. “I’m going to grease his ass anyway.” He reached up and turned on the overhead fan in the living room and kitchen. Then he slid the window open. It might be a giveaway for Verdina, but they had to breathe.


  Bobby felt the change in air immediately as fresh air slipped through the dirty screen. He lowered his shirt and breathed shallowly.

  He’d been in one of Verdina’s classes. He never liked the thin, Pinscher-faced man, but then Bobby had never liked any of his teachers. He couldn’t remember anyone saying anything bad about the man. If he was into little boys, Bobby doubted this was a new hobby he’d started in Los Angeles. More than likely the man had been feeding his need for years.

  Split’s curses from the back rooms were punctuated by a loud crash. When he came back into the living room, his eyes were wild and spittle flecked his lip.

  “Calm down, mi amigo,” Blockbuster said, putting his hand on Split’s shoulder.

  The smaller man ignored it. He licked his lips and took a deep breath. “Pajiero had a bookcase filled with videotapes. There weren’t pictures on the outside, just names of kids and ages. Motherfucker is sick.”

  Maybe he’d been filling his need through the U.S. postal service. Maybe he’d never really touched a kid, just got off on watching it, like that made it any better. Bobby felt his anger rising. Looking at the couches against the wall and the empty space in between reminded him that the man wasn’t just a watcher of videos.

  “I had no idea he was like this.”

  “Most people never do.”

  Split’s matter-of-fact words made Bobby look at him. There was a faraway look in the gangbanger’s eyes. His upper lip trembled as his mouth opened. Then the moment was over and a sneer skid through the vulnerability.

  “We’re gonna toss this place. If we’re lucky, what we’re looking for is here.”

  “And if it isn’t?” Blockbuster asked from the kitchen. He yanked the refrigerator door and peered inside.

  “Then we’ll find out where it is.”

  “We’re going to wait for him, aren’t we?” Bobby asked.

  “You’re fucking right.”