They Thirst Part 5

"Please," Rico said as he stopped at a traffic light with a row of other lowriders. Feet punched accelerators, challenging him, but he paid no attention.

"Don't cry, okay?" She stopped after another moment but didn't look at him, then fumbled in her purse for a tissue to blow her nose. Sixteen! Rico thought. She's just turned sixteen! And here he was like all the rest of the strutting, Sat.u.r.day night boulevard crowd, dressed in his tight chinos and pale blue s.h.i.+rt, gold chains and a tiny c.o.ke ; spoon dangling from his neck like a macho stud, going to take his woman to get ' something to eat, hit a disco or two, and then return her to his bed for a quick s.e.x session. Only now there was a very big difference-he had gotten Merida pregnant, filled up a child with a child, and now he felt weighed down with age and the serious concerns he'd never dreamed about even in his worst nightmares. He imagined that if he could see his face-lean and high-cheekboned and handsome in ' a dark, dangerous way because of a nose that had been broken twice and set badly both times-he would be able to see faint lines around his eyes and crinkling in his forehead. In that instant he wanted to be a little boy again, playing with red plastic cars on a cold wooden floor while his mother and father talked about Mr. Cabrillo running off with Mr. Hernandez's wife as his big sister sat spinning the dial of her new transistor radio back and forth. He wanted to be a child forever, without worries or weights around his neck. But his mother and father had been dead for almost six years now, killed in a fire that had started from a spark from bad electrical i wiring; the fire had roared through the tenement building like a volcanic whirlwind, and three floors had collapsed before the first of the fire engines arrived. Rico had been running with a street gang called the Cripplers then, and was huddled under a stairway, drinking red wine with three buddies, when he'd heard the fire engines screaming; it was a noise that even now sometimes awakened him and made him break out in a cold sweat. His sister Deanne was a model up in San Francisco now, or so she said in her infrequent letters. She always wrote that she was about to do a shooting for some magazine or other, or that she'd met a man who was going to get her into commercials.

Once she'd written that she was going to be the June Playmate, but of course the girl in that month's Playboy was blond and blue-eyed and worlds away from the barrio. He hadn't seen his sister in two years, and the last letter had been over six months before.

The traffic light flickered to green. Around him the lowriders screeched off, leaving thick trails of rubber. He realized he was gripping Merida's hand very tightly.

"Everything's going to be okay," he told her. "You'll see." And then she quickly slid across the seat to him, as close as a second skin, and if love felt anything like pity, then yes, Rico loved her. "Listen, you want a hamburger or something? I can stop there." He motioned toward a Fat Jim's burger stand, a huge, livid, neon hamburger floating in the sky. She shook her head. "Okay.

We'll eat later." He took his pack of Winstons off the dashboard and lit a cigarette. A black and white prowl car went gliding by in the opposite direction, the eyes of the cop at the wheel meeting Rico's for one glacial, heartstopping instant. Rico was carrying a few grams of c.o.ke and some nickel bags of fine Colombian Red in a box that rested in a cavity cut beneath the rubber padding of the trunk. That was his business now, supplying c.o.ke to the kids who hun^around the rock clubs on Sunset Strip. Though he was just a nickel-and-dimer, he was making enough money to keep himself in good threads. And his supplier, a bald guy who wore Pierre Cardin business suits and called himself Gypsy John, said he had the nerve and ambition to be big in the trade someday. Not as big as Gypsy John, of course, but big enough. Rico let his gaze coolly slither away from the cop's and jockeyed into position behind a Thunderbird painted in tiger stripes. Someone called him from the curb, and he glanced over to see Felix Ortega and Benny Gracion standing with two fine-looking foxes in front of the Go-Go Disco. Rico raised his hand and shouted, "How's it going amigos?" but did not stop because they were walking reminders of his time with the Cripplers.

And finally Merida asked the question Rico had dreaded. "What are we going to do?"

Eyes s.h.i.+ning, she watched him carefully for any sign of betrayal. He shrugged, cigarette dangling from his lower lip. "What do you wanna do?"

"It's your baby."

"It's yours too!" he said loudly, anger filling his face with blood-why hadn't she been on the pill or something?-and then the flush of shame spreading hotly across his cheeks. "Oh, Jesus," he said hoa.r.s.ely. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do!"

"You love me, don't you? You said you did. If you hadn't said that, I wouldn't have let you do it to me. You been the first and the only." He nodded grimly, remembering the first time he'd taken her. It had been in the backseat of his car in a drive-in out near Southgate. He'd felt proud after it was over because she was his first virgin, and he knew you weren't really a man until you'd broken in a virgin. He remembered what Felix Ortega had told him once in the abandoned warehouse the Cripplers used as headquarters-"f.u.c.k a virgin, man, and she'll love you forever." Oh, Christ! he thought. Forever? With just one chick? I got a business to think of. I could be buying myself silk s.h.i.+rts pretty soon, and alligator shoes, or a fine black Porsche. I could get one of those penthouse apartments like the movie stars have. I could really be somebody in this town, I could be bigger than Gypsy John evenl But now he saw his path, and it wound straight back to the black, bitter heart of the barrio. In ten years he would be working in some garage and coming home at five to a two-room apartment where Merida and two or three kids waited, snotty noses and all; his hands would be black with engine grime, and his gut would be spreading from all the beer with the boys on Sat.u.r.day nights. Merida would be haggard, the kids underfoot all the time and the close confines of the tenement making her nervous and jumpy, different from the beautiful girl she was now. They would argue about his future-why he couldn't find a better-paying job and why he had no more ambition-and life would start to close in around his throat, choking him to death. NO! he told himself.

I CAN'T DO THAT! He reached down and turned the radio up loud so he couldn't hear himself think.

"Merida," he said, "I want you to be sure. I mean ... I want you to be for certain that. . . you know . . . the kid's mine . . ." He was groping, looking for something to put between himself and the decision that had to be made. Instantly he felt like a traitor, a coward to the very pit of his soul. But he knew the truth-he didn't love her enough to change his life for her. She turned her face away from him and very slowly straightened her spine so that she was sitting totally upright and not slumped as she had been a moment before.

She moved away from him, her hands clenched in her lap.

So, Rico told himself. Now she understands. Oh, Christ, this is s.h.i.+tty, man!

You're treating her like common p.u.s.s.y, some Crippler groupie, or the neon-daubed hustlers who call out their rates from each side of the boulevard. And then Merida, a sob bursting from her throat, jumped from the Chevy before Rico knew what was happening. She ran down the street in the opposite direction, lowriders swerving around her, drivers cursing or calling out rude invitations.

"Merida!" Rico shouted. He twisted the wheel, ran up onto the curb, then jerked the keys out of the ignition. Then he was out and running along Whittier, trying to find her among the hundreds of glaring white headlights that stared impa.s.sively back at him. "MERIDA!" he called, braving a green Ford whose driver invited him to stick his head up his a.s.s. He ran on through the traffic, being cursed in a variety of languages and inflections, but he didn't care. Merida was too young, too innocent, to be alone on a Sat.u.r.day night on this neon h.e.l.l of a boulevard. She didn't know the potential dangers, she was too trusting. After all, he thought bitterly, she trusted me, and I'm the worst kind of rapist-I took her soul. Half-blinded by charging headlights, he continued on, leaping aside as a burly red-bearded biker swept past him on a blue chopper. Something s.h.i.+mmered on the pavement, and Rico bent to pick it up. It was Merida's silver crucifix, his birthday present to her. The clasp was broken where she'd ripped it off her neck; the necklace was still warm from her body heat.

"Merida!" he shouted, staring into a blaze of lights. "I'm sorry!" But the night had swallowed her up, she was gone, and he knew that even if she did hear him calling over the tumultuous noise, she wouldn't turn back. No, she had too much pride for that, and in comparison to her, Rico felt slimy, covered with contagious sores.

He saw the blue light of that prowl car approaching, sliding through the lowriders. He was pierced by cold panic as he thought of his merchandise sitting in the Chevy's trunk, an easy score for the cops if they decided to see what he was carrying. Whirling around, he ran for the sidewalk, shoving people aside in his race with the prowl car. Pimps in peac.o.c.k suits and their hot-pants-clad hustlers slipped into doorways as the cops drove past. The blue light was going around and around, filling the air with electric resentment, but the cops weren't riding their siren. Rico slid behind the Chevy's wheel, jammed the key into the ignition, and backed off the curb, then spun the wheel sharply and merged with the slow westbound traffic. About a block ahead he saw that two lowriders had slammed together in the middle of the boulevard, and a couple of guys were scuffling, urged on by a tight ring of onlookers. As Rico swerved past them, he heard the heart-stopping shrill of the police siren and, looking into his rearview mirror, he saw the prowl car stop to break up the fight. He punched his accelerator and slid smoothly around the slower cars. No cops giving me ha.s.sles tonight, he told himself. s.h.i.+t, I've had ha.s.sles enough!

And then he remembered Merida, alone on the boulevard. He couldn't leave her for the ma.s.s of predators who were all looking for fresh meat. He found a clear spot, made a fast U-turn, and drove back past the prowl car, past where Merida had leapt out into the street. Figures that had vanished into dark alleys and doorways were now reemerging to hawk their wares. The sidewalks were crowded with hungry humanity, and in that jostling crush one skinny, pregnant Chicano girl would hardly matter. Rico was frightened for her; he held the silver chain and crucifix clenched in one hand, and though he was not a particularly religious man, he wished she'd kept it on for good luck. He thought, I'll find her. If it takes me all night, I'll find her. His Chevy moved on into the night, borne along and finally lost in the sea of metal.

SIX.

Palatazin was standing at the locked iron gates of Hollywood Memorial Cemetery as Merida Santos was leaping from the red Chevy on Whittier Boulevard. His hands had closed around the bars, and he stood staring in as a chill evening breeze clattered palm leaves overhead. It was almost seven o'clock, and he realized that he'd told Jo on the telephone that he would pick her up at six-thirty for their dinner at The Budapest. He decided to tell her that something had come up at the office, to keep this cemetery thing to himself. Because what if he was wrong? That would make him as crazy as Lieutenant Kirkland had thought he was.

Stake out a cemetery? Kirkland had asked incredulously over the telephone. What for?

"Because," he'd said, "I asked you to. That should be enough."

"I'm sorry, captain," Kirkland had replied, "but I'll have to have more than that. Sat.u.r.day night in Hollywood can be pretty d.a.m.ned rough, as you well know.

Now, what exactly does this have to do with the vandalism?"

"It's . . . it's very important that you do as I ask." Palatazin knew he was sounding crazy and that his voice was high and nervous and that Lieutenant Kirkland was probably grinning at one of his detectives, making a circular motion at his temple with his forefinger. "Please, lieutenant. No questions, not just yet. I'm only asking for a man or two out there tonight."

"Captain, Hollywood Memorial has their own watchman."

"But what happened to the watchman who was out there last night? Has anyone found him? No, I don't think so."

"Sorry." Kirkland had let ar hint of irritation creep into his voice. "Why don't you send some of your own men if you want the cemetery watched so badly?"

"All my men are working day and night on finding the Roach. I can't ask any of them to . . ."

"Same here, sir. I can't. It's not justified." Kirkland had laughed softly. "I don't think those stiffs are going to be causing any trouble out there tonight, sir. I have to go, captain, if there's nothing else."

"No. Nothing else."

"Nice talking with you, captain. Sorry I couldn't help you out. Good hunting to you. Hope you nail that guy pretty soon."

"Yes. Good-bye, lieutenant." And Palatazin had heard Kirkland hang up his phone.

Now, for the second time today, he stood at the gates of the cemetery. This afternoon he'd watched the officers from the Hollywood Division walking around out there, stepping over skeletons; then the insurance and mortuary people had come in, followed by the dump trucks and work crews. Now the place looked serene again with the gra.s.sy knolls whitened by moonlight, the new mounds of dirt the only reminder that something terrible had happened there last night.

"Can I help you?" someone said from the darkness on the other side of the gate.

A flashlight was flicked on, the beam directed into Palatazin's face. Palatazin reached for his wallet and showed his badge. "Oh. Sorry." The flashlight beam dropped, and a watchman in a dark gray uniform materialized from the night. He was a tall, white-haired man with friendly blue eyes. He wore a Hollywood Memorial badge on his s.h.i.+rt. "I'm Kelsen," he said. "What can I do for you?"

"Nothing, thank you. I just came to ... look."

"To look? You should come back on Monday and take the tour-they show you all the celebrity graves." Kelsen smiled, but when Palatazin didn't respond, the smile faded. "Looking for anything in particular?"

"No. I was here earlier this afternoon when the officers were investigating."

"Oh, so that's it. d.a.m.nedest thing I ever heard tell of. I didn't exactly see any of it, but I heard about it when they called me in. I don't usually work on Sat.u.r.day nights. My wife pitched a fit."

"I imagine she did," Palatazin said quietly. "The man who worked last night. I understand his name was Zachary?"

"Yeah, old Zack." Kelsen leaned against the gate; behind him light streamed through the window of the watchman's station. "He usually has the weekend s.h.i.+ft.

Now he turns up missing, so they call me in." He shrugged and smiled again. "I don't care, I need the money. Listen, you people don't think Zack had anything to do with what happened here last night, do you?"

"I don't know. I don't work in the Hollywood Division."

"Oh." Kelsen frowned and swung his light up toward Palatazin again. "So why are you interested? I mean, it's d.a.m.ned strange and all, but I thought the cops wrapped it up today. Vandalism, right? Some cult kids who maybe needed coffins for ... whatever it is they do. I heard the same thing happened over at Hope Hill Cemetery last week; somebody clipped the lock on the gates, tore up a few graves, and made off with five or six coffins. Hope Hill's a small cemetery, you know, and they can't afford a watchnffen, so n.o.body knows what happened. Just crazy kids, I guess. It's a crazy world, right?"

"Yes. Crazy."

"Listen, do you want to come in or something? Take a look around? I've got an extra flashlight."

Palatazin shook his head. "No need for that. I wouldn't find anything." He stared at Kelsen, his eyes going dark and cold. "Mr! Kelsen," he said, "is there a lock on the door of your little house there?"

"Yeah, there's a lock. Why?"

"Because I'm going to suggest that you do something, and I want you to listen to me very carefully." Palatazin's hands curled tighter around the bars. "If I tried to explain to you why I want you to do this, you wouldn't understand. So just listen, please."

"Okay," the watchman said, but he stepped back a pace from the man at the gate, whose gaze had gone so hard and chilling.

"If anyone else comes to this gate tonight-man, woman, or child-you should lock your door and draw the blinds. If you hear this gate opening, you should turn up your radio very loud so you can't hear. And you should not come out to look. Let whoever it may be do as he or she pleases. But do not-do not-come out to try to stop them."

"That's . . . that's my job," Kelsen said softly, a crooked grin frozen on his face. "What is this, a joke? Candid Camera? What's going on?"

"I'm deadly serious, Mr. Kelsen. Are you a religious man?" This guy's not a cop! Kelsen thought. He's a freakin' nut! "I'm a Catholic," he said. "Listen, what's your name?"

"If and when someone comes to this gate tonight," Palatazin continued, ignoring the question, "you should pray. Pray very loudly, don't pay any attention to anything they say to you." He squinted when the watchman's light hit his face.

"Perhaps if you pray hard enough, they'll leave you in peace."

"I think you should go, mister," Kelsen said. "Get out of here before I call a real cop!" His face was contorted, and his once friendly eyes turned mean. "Go on, buddy, get out!" He started for the telephone on his desk. "I'm calling the cops right now!"

"All right," Palatazin said, "all right, I'm going." Kelsen stopped and looked back; the flashlight in his hand was shaking. "But remember what I've told you.

Please. Pray, and keep praying."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah! I'll pray for you, you crazy freak!" Kelsen disappeared into his station and slammed the door behind him. Palatazin turned, walked quickly to his car and drove away; he was trembling, his stomach churning slowly. Hope Hill Cemetery, did the man say? This has happened before? Oh my G.o.d, he thought, trying to keep down a rising wave of nausea. Please, no. Don't let it happen again! Not here! Not in Los Angeles!

He hoped he was crazy; he hoped the pressure of the Roach killings was beginning to get to him, that he was seeing grinning shadows where nothing existed but the warped antics of-what had Kelsen said?-kids who belonged to some crazy cult? A hundred cults, a thousand of them, would be easier to deal with than what he was beginning to fear had ripped those coffins out of the ground.

He had been sleeping in his bed less than six blocks away when it had happened, and perhaps when he'd awakened from the dream about his mother, the things were here at work.

Too late, Palatazin realized he'd turned off Santa Monica Boulevard and driven right past Romaine Street, heading south on Western. He touched the brakes for only an instant and then drove on because he knew where he was going. The gray-bricked building on First Street was empty now-it had been condemned years ago-and the broken edges of gla.s.s gleamed in the windows. It looked desolate and forlorn, as if it had been abandoned for a very long time; the walls were smeared with old graffiti-he could see one faded white declaration that read Seniors Fine in '59. Somewhere in that graffiti would still be two painful statements scrawled by the hand of a vicious child-Palatazin Sucks 'em and Old Lady P, Is Gonna Burn In h.e.l.l For Crazy People.

He lifted his gaze to the top floor windows. All broken now, all dark and empty; but for an instant he thought he saw his mother up there, much younger of course, her hair almost fully gray but her eyes not nearly as haunted and wild as he remembered them at the end. She was peering out onto First Street, watching the corner where little Andre, now in the sixth grade, would cross carrying his green Army backpack filled with notebooks and pencils, math texts and history homework. When he reached that corner, he always looked up, and his mother would always wave from the window. Three times a week a woman named Mrs.

Gibbs would come by to help him with his English; he was still having difficulties, though most of the teachers at his elementary school spoke Hungarian. Up in that small dark apartment, the extremes of temperature had been almost unbearable; at the height of summer the place was an oven even with all the windows open, and when a cold winter wind blew down from the mountains and shook the ancient window frames, Andre could see the faint wraithlike plume of his mother's breath. Every night, no matter what the season, she peered fearfully down onto the street, checked and rechecked the three dead-bolt locks on the door, and paced the floor muttering and crying until the downstairs neighbors slammed the ceiling with a broom and shouted, "Go to sleep, you witch woman!"

Andre was never liked or even tolerated by the other children in the neighborhood, a hodgepodge of Jewish, Hungarian, and Polish families, because their parents were afraid of his mother, because they discussed the "witch woman" over their dinner tables and told the children they'd better stay away from her son, he might be crazy in the head, too. His friends were those awkward, shy, or backward children who do not quite fit in with the others, who can find no place to exist except on the outer rim and consequently play alone most of the time. On some occasions when he grew nervous, Andre the witch woman's son lapsed into speaking Hungarian with a thick accent. Then he would be chased home from school by a pack of children who threw stones and laughed whenever he tripped and fell.

It was very hard for him, because home was no refuge. It was a prison where his mother scrawled crucifixes on the walls and windows and doors with red.Crayola crayons, where she shrieked out in the night from the images that seared her brain, where she sometimes lay in her bed for days at a time, curled up like a fetus, staring blankly at a wall. It became progressively worse and worse, and even Uncle Milo, his mother's brother who had immigrated to America in the late thirties and owned a successful men's clothing store, began to stop in and ask her if she would like to go someplace where she wouldn't have to worry about anything anymore, where there were people to take care of her and keep her happy. No.' she'd screamed during one terrible argument that kept Uncle Milo away for weeks. No.' I won't leave my son alone!

What would I find up there if I went in? Palatazin asked himself, staring up at the front room. A few newspapers all cut in pieces, lying in a thick sediment of dust? Perhaps an old dress or two hanging in a closet? Things best forgotten?

Some of the crucifixes might still be scrawled on the walls, close to the nail holes where the religious pictures had hung in their gaudy gilded frames. Palatazin, grownup Andre, looked up to the windows where he thought he saw the pale, ghostly face of a woman waiting for her son to come home. He didn't like to think about those last months; putting her in Golden Garden and leaving her there to die had torn him to pieces, but what else could he have done? She couldn't take care of herself anymore; she had to be fed like a baby, and very often she spat up her food like a baby or soiled the awful rubber, diaperlike thing she wore. She was wasting away to nothing, alternately praying and crying.

Her eyes had become the largest thing about her. As she sat in her favorite rocking chair day after day and stared down upon Romaine Street, her eyes became luminous, as large as pale white moons. So he'd sent her away where the doctors and nurses could take care of her. She'd died of a stroke in a small room with forest-green walls and a window that looked out on a golf course. She'd been dead for two hours before a nurse came in to check on her at six o'clock in the morning.

Palatazin remembered her last words to him, the very night before she died, "Andre, Andre," she'd said softly, reaching up her frail white hand to grip his arm. "What time is it? Is it day or night?"

"Night, Mama," he replied. "It's almost eight o'clock."

"Night comes too fast. Always too fast. Is the door locked?"

"Yes." It wasn't, of course, but when he told her that it was, he could see that it comforted her.

"Good. My good Andre, you must never forget to ... to lock the door. Oh, I'm so sleepy. I can hardly keep my eyes open. I heard that black cat scratching on the front door this morning, so I shooed it away. They should keep that cat in their apartment."

"Yes, Mama." A black cat had belonged to their nextdoor neighbors in the First Street apartment building; after all these years it must surely be dust. And then his mother's eyes had clouded over, and for a long time she'd stared at her son without speaking. "Andre, I'm afraid," she'd said finally, her voice cracking like old yellowed paper. The tears glimmered in her eyes, and Palatazin had carefully wiped them away with a handkerchief when they started to roll down her cheeks. She'd gripped his hand tightly, her flesh as dry as leather. "One of them ... one of them followed me when I came back from the market. I heard him walking behind me, and when I... turned I saw his grinning face. I saw his eyes, Andre, his terrible burning eyes! He wanted me to ... to take his hand and go with him . . . because of what I did to your papa . . ."

"Shhhhhh," Palatazin had said, wiping tiny beads of perspiration off her forehead. "You're wrong, Mama. There was no one. You were only imagining it." He remembered the night she was recalling; she'd dropped a sack of groceries and run home, screaming. It had been the last night she'd ever left the apartment.

"They can't hurt us now, Mama. We're too far away for them to ever find us again."

"NO!" she'd said, her eyes widening. Her face was as pale as a china plate, her fingernails digging half-moons into his hand. "DON'T YOU EVER BELIEVE THAT! If you don't watch for them always... ALWAYS!... they can come for you and find you. They're always there, Andre . . . you just can't see them . . ."

"Why don't you try to sleep now, Mama? I'll sit here with you until I have to leave, all right?"

"Leave?" she'd said, suddenly panicked. "Leave? Where are you going?"

"Home. I have to go home. Jo's waiting for me."

"Jo?" She'd looked at him suspiciously. "Who's that?"

"My wife, Mama. You know who Jo is, she came with me to see you last night."

"Oh, stop that! You're just a little boy! Even in California they don't let little boys get married! Did you get that milk I asked you to bring on the way back from school?"

He'd nodded and tried to smile. "I brought it."

"That's good." And then she'd settled back and closed her eyes. After another moment her grip on his hand had loosened enough for him to pull away. He'd sat and gazed at her for a long time; she looked so different, but still there was something there of the woman he'd known a long time ago, the one who'd sat in the little stone house in Krajeck, knitting a sweater for her son. When he'd stood up very quietly to leave, his mother's eyes had opened again, and this time they burned through his soul. "I won't leave you, Andre," she'd whispered.

"I won't leave my son alone." And then she was asleep again, just that quickly, her mouth half-open, and the breath rustling in and out of her lungs. There was an odor in the room like lilacs on the edge of decay. Palatazin had slipped out of the room, and a doctor named Vacarella had called him just after six the next morning.

My G.o.d! Palatazin thought suddenly and looked at his wrist.w.a.tch. Jo is waiting at home! He started the car, glanced up once more at the top-floor window-now 'empty, the broken pane catching a little leftover light from someone else's house-and drove toward Romaine Street. When he stopped at a traffic light two blocks away, he thought he heard dogs howling very far away in a strange close harmony.

But when the light changed and he drove on, he didn't hear them anymore-or perhaps he was afraid to listen. Thoughts of Hollywood Memorial loomed up too quickly for him to cut them off. His hands began to sweat on the steering wheel.

They can't hurt us now, he thought. We're too far away. Too far away. Too far away.

And from the depths of his memory, his mother's voice answering, Don't you ever believe that . . .

SEVEN.